lady_branwyn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_branwyn) wrote2008-03-21 06:02 pm
lady_branwyn) wrote2008-03-21 06:02 pm
BMEM '08: Black Breath
I think it is interesting that both Tolkien and his alter-ego Faramir were put out of action by fever.
Title: Black Breath
Characters: Tolkien
Source: historical - World War I
Rating: No warning except for creepiness
He had already been weary, worn down by the endless shelling, by nights lit by the glare of magnesium. Now he stared at the bed’s peeling paint, too weak to turn his head. He wondered at how the paint curled in graceful flourishes above the bare metal.
Somewhere above him, a voice rang out like an iron hammer, and he winced as his brow was scorched by the cold touch of hands.
“Number 100054/2. Tolkien, J. 2nd Lieutenant. Mark him down as trench fever.” A pen scratched on paper, the sound unbearably loud.
This fever was a modern ill, never seen before this, the first modern war. The scientists were puzzled and could not say its cause, yet 2nd Lieutenant Tolkien knew what the men of science did not.
For the trenches were catacombs of half-decayed relics where the very walls breathed out despair, where each heavy rain freed the slain from their graves. For months, his brigade had charged across the same patch of mire, coming no closer to victory. And each time, soldiers were left behind to feed the stinking ossuary. The black breath of despair could strike a man down as surely as a cloud of phosgene.
Title: Black Breath
Characters: Tolkien
Source: historical - World War I
Rating: No warning except for creepiness
He had already been weary, worn down by the endless shelling, by nights lit by the glare of magnesium. Now he stared at the bed’s peeling paint, too weak to turn his head. He wondered at how the paint curled in graceful flourishes above the bare metal.
Somewhere above him, a voice rang out like an iron hammer, and he winced as his brow was scorched by the cold touch of hands.
“Number 100054/2. Tolkien, J. 2nd Lieutenant. Mark him down as trench fever.” A pen scratched on paper, the sound unbearably loud.
This fever was a modern ill, never seen before this, the first modern war. The scientists were puzzled and could not say its cause, yet 2nd Lieutenant Tolkien knew what the men of science did not.
For the trenches were catacombs of half-decayed relics where the very walls breathed out despair, where each heavy rain freed the slain from their graves. For months, his brigade had charged across the same patch of mire, coming no closer to victory. And each time, soldiers were left behind to feed the stinking ossuary. The black breath of despair could strike a man down as surely as a cloud of phosgene.