ofic - Tyr story ficlet - Serrano, Counseling
I forget who gave me that prompt it was so long ago, and in the end it went a bit off from what was asked anyway, sorry XD
Pre-story: Serrano, counseling.
"And you... truly don’t mind the draft?"
The recruiter seems a little puzzled. They must not get a lot of volunteers from the mountains.
She gives a little shrug. "Someone has to go."
He plays with his pen, brow furrowed, searching for words; when he asks it's all cautiously, like he thinks he's about to step on a mine. "Is there a reason why it has to be you?"
(Because their village has a quota to fill and she has brothers, the twins one year after her and her big brother who papa's been training up to take over the family bakery. She has two younger sisters who'll be of age next week, the smallest ones who'll be good to go in another three or four years, and a cousin who's been boiling to avenge his dead father and will never survive one week. No other family is that big. She can calculate odds. It'll land on a Serrano sooner or later.)
"Doesn't," she says. "But why not?"
Also if she's away the army feeds her, if she dies in combat her parents get money, and if she survives likely she'll be an officer, better paid, and with a solid job, and she'll never have to come back here in her life.
Later when they offer her the treatment she thinks about the half of her strike team she's lost since boot camp ended four months ago and how much bigger the death money will be when her turn comes and how much she wants to get her knife in a Gwelwi brain or three, the same way they dug into hers and forced their way into the one space in life that was only ever hers.
Pre-story: Serrano, counseling.
"And you... truly don’t mind the draft?"
The recruiter seems a little puzzled. They must not get a lot of volunteers from the mountains.
She gives a little shrug. "Someone has to go."
He plays with his pen, brow furrowed, searching for words; when he asks it's all cautiously, like he thinks he's about to step on a mine. "Is there a reason why it has to be you?"
(Because their village has a quota to fill and she has brothers, the twins one year after her and her big brother who papa's been training up to take over the family bakery. She has two younger sisters who'll be of age next week, the smallest ones who'll be good to go in another three or four years, and a cousin who's been boiling to avenge his dead father and will never survive one week. No other family is that big. She can calculate odds. It'll land on a Serrano sooner or later.)
"Doesn't," she says. "But why not?"
Also if she's away the army feeds her, if she dies in combat her parents get money, and if she survives likely she'll be an officer, better paid, and with a solid job, and she'll never have to come back here in her life.
Later when they offer her the treatment she thinks about the half of her strike team she's lost since boot camp ended four months ago and how much bigger the death money will be when her turn comes and how much she wants to get her knife in a Gwelwi brain or three, the same way they dug into hers and forced their way into the one space in life that was only ever hers.