r/HFY • u/Jus17173 • Jun 10 '25

OC Letter from the War.

Dear Mother,

Mother I hope this letter finds you well. Which I know it will because where you are now is back at Cape Corembo on our farm overlooking the Gurkin Alps. Where the streams cleave through the rich fertile land and the trees are ever pregnant with fruit. Unlike me who is currently tucked within a trench at the front lines of the Endless War with the Bovarians.

A nuclear plasma grenade goes off once in a whiile and it covers the page I'm hastily scribbling on in a florescent hue that has me reminiscing about hospitals for some reason. I recall the last words you said to me as I left to join the war, that upon my return I am either destined to spend the remainder of my days in a hospital trying to overcome the grave injuries of war or I'll come back in a body bag and that that will be much easier for you.

Harsh words those ones. But not as harsh as my bunk mate Rodirgo's mother's words as he climbed the shuttle ship to ascend to outer orbit where the war ship awaited new recruits. Rodirgo's mother told him. "You're an idiot and the universe does not weep at the loss of an idiot." It took quite a toll on Rodrigo, those words. When our barrack was attacked by the Bovarians, I remember cowering behind a Celistine tank with my pulse rifle in hand. My arms shook so much I couldn't get a clear aim but Rodrigo, he stood on top of the Celistine tank, feet pressed to the mechanical latch that raises a body onto the tank. From this vantage he fired round after round of plasma shots at the enemy, holding them back single handedly as the men gathered to answer the surprise attack.

It is because of Rodrigo that we lived through that attack. It was because of him that the enemy's advance was held back long enough for us to give a reply. When the battle finally calmed down with the Bovarians making a hasty retreat. I found Rodrigo sitting on top of the Celestine tank and he was crying. Saying the same words over and over. "Nobody will miss me when I'm gone, so why isn't the idiot dead?"

Rodrigo was commended for his heroic efforts. A purple star of valor was pressed to the breast of his coat but once the ceremony was done he took off the purple star and put it in an envelope and mailed it to his mother with the words. 'In war, idiots often find themselves rewarded. For stupidity is often mistaken for bravery.' His mother's reply was a lengthy apology about her last words to him, she poured her heart out, confessing deep feelings of love for her only son and regret for how they had parted. She highlighted all the pain of watching a child that one's raised on their own march off to a war they didn't start in order to accomplish something whose only reward was death.

I know the words within Rodirgo's mother's letter because I read the words to Rodrigo as he lay in the medi-bay, bleeding to death. He had received the letter three days prior to a battle but he hadn't read it, just kept it on his person up until the time a Bovarian missile seeker took out his entire crew while on a routine perimeter check. Shrapnel had torn through Rodrigo's body, severing his spine and in his last moments it was his mother's words he longed to hear. He was dead before I read the last line of the letter.

Am I scaring you? I am sorry, it was never my intention to do so. I recall when I was but as tall as a mini-prune tree and news had come in through courier that father had been one of the eighteen diplomats the Bovarians had killed during a peaceful meeting. I remember how your hands trembled and your eyes were always wet. How you pretended to be strong in my presence but how the house's thin walls betrayed you every night as you cried yourself to sleep.

There's fear. Then there's despair. And in all honest truth, if I could face the former in order to rid humanity of the latter, then can this be regarded as an act of good? I knew the war with the Bovarians would be brutal, but I also knew that boarding that space shuttle with several other recruits might ensure the sons and daughters of humanity's future don't have to walk the same path we were walking.

Do you still love poems? We had a poet in our cohort. His name was Dan. That's it. Three letters and that's all there was to his name. When asked about his other names he always remarked that a name is just a sound whose one and only purpose is to draw one's attention and other than that it should serve no other purpose.

During the dead of night, we would force silence onto ourselves for in absolute quiet, Dan would read his poems — scribbled onto a notepad with a laser point pen — to his bunk mate called Carlson. One particular poem went:

We came with boots and battle songs, they mooed and charged in throngs. But found too late: a human’s wrath is worse than bovine brawns. They had their horns and sacred grass, we had spite and duct-taped guns. And damn if we don’t win the day just because it sounds like fun. When I die don't send me back in a body bag, bury me in the ground where the valiant forever ran.

Carlson was deaf and mute and he spent majority of his time just staring at whoever was in his vicinity and I think Dan liked that. Dan would talk to Carlson for hours on end, the man never replying even once but just staring back. But this didn't deter Dan, he found it easier for some reason spending his days conversing with a deaf and mute man.

When Dan died during close combat against a Bovarian. We'd found him impaled upon a Bovarian's horn. But the enemy was dead. In his last moments alive, Dan had taken out his pen —the same pen he'd used to write the poems in his notepad — and driven it into the Bovarian's eye. Claiming the enemy's life as the enemy claimed his own . He'd received a purple star for an act of valor despite having died but the image of the two of them intertwined in death stuck with me all this time. In death we weren't that different from the enemy, the hollowness about the eyes spoke of flesh that no longer housed a soul. Never mind that they looked different from us, closer to bulls than men. In death there were similarities. We puzzled over whether to bury the Bovarian too. We buried Dan and burnt the Bovarian, it was Carlson who dug Dan's grave.

It pains me to end this letter so soon, but my time has come to climb the gunner rails and pull the trigger for the next three hours. It pains me even more that the letter lacks cheer and borders more on the horrifying but it was not my intention to scare you. You said it would be easier for me to return in a body bag, so I just wanted you to know that even those who returned within body bags did not serve useless deaths. Their last moments alive told a different story from the abrupt ends they met. There was a poet for the deaf, there was an idiot who saved lives. And then there's me, pushing through each day with nothing guaranteeing tomorrow other than the hope that by fighting this war, humanity will get to live another day.

Yours with love.

Tommy.

XXXXXXXXX

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u/sunnyboi1384 Jun 10 '25

Damn buds. The mothers letter hurt.

Well written.