Here, there is no one to tell him that he cannot eat this, that he is lost, that he should not be doing something, that he should maybe drink a little more water, that he cannot step into this little mound of dirt to see better, where there is a land mine. In this barren wasteland, there is no one to help him keep watch on the swirling desert sands that contain nothing but a hint of a sliver of something lost, something hopeless, something gone.

He glances over his shoulder, but sees no one. His eyes shiver with the remnants of a youthful stare. There is a small time device clipped on his forearm, but he does not bother to look. He knows that there are hours to pass before something enters his mind, saying that he should go back.

He stands like a statue, his arms by his sides, but as the sun beats down at his face, his heavy clothing, the boots laden with heavy, heavy metal, the posture of his rigid self begins to slump, slowly. He does not mind; this is what he faces day after day, week after week, month after month.

The heartbeat of time wears away at him. Sometimes the desert sands blow into his eyes, sharp shards of glass in a warm, flesh apparatus. Sometimes the heat is too hot to bear, yet he does nothing but sigh a long, melancholy sigh. There is no one to complain to, not here.

He does not long for company, for family, for anything. He feels as if there is nothing left to him, for him, as if he is an empty shell waiting for someone to pick him up, to take him away where there is something called a home.

He thinks that this is all he will be doing for his entire life, never realizing that he could run, run, run.

But of course there is no one here to tell him that.

***

He hears faint echoes from the distance and ponders this, the distance that he will never reach, never feel, never get to walk for the price of his lifetime, for only a moment, sighs with the depth of the skies, and lets his feet fall, one after the other, until his lips crack with the red hot sun, its embers aloft in a stormy sea.

He comes across a tiny girl, hidden in the crevices, death winding in mazes all around her. He says something. She looks up; her eyes a pair of bright green gems.

He picks her up, limp as a rag doll, light as a fist of feathers, back to his camp. She scratches his face and screams, but stops when he gives her a cup of his dusty canteen water and a small square of chocolate. She consumes it with an angry hunger and looks up into his face for more.

***

His fellow friends at the camp act as if nothing has happened. Children like these get lost all the time, they say. It’s no big deal. We usually set up a place for them and then take them somewhere else when it’s time.

But what does it’s time mean? Does it mean when the war is over? Does it mean when there’s no one left?

The girl with the green glass eyes does not talk. She does not look at anyone. Day after day, she sits curled up in the corner of the big window, staring out beyond the vast expanse of desert, as if she is always waiting for something. Something of many ages to come.

It seems as if the thing she is waiting for never comes, but still she awaits. She stares on, at birds, at sky, at night when there is nothing left but shadows and darkness, her already faraway soul drifting away in the cool air.

The sand swirls up in cascades, in dunes and mountains of silent, golden glory, but the girl does nothing but stare out the window. He can almost feel her presence at night, when the full moon wanes in a waxy crescent, and she longs for her home.

But what is a home when you cannot return? What is a home when it is but dust? What is a home that you are forced to run away from? The girl’s motionless shadow asks.

He wishes he could answer, say why, say how, but he cannot. He cannot spit out lies like she engulfs truths in her wispy teardrops that disappear as soon as they leave her eyes.

He sometimes counts the endless stars at night, as many as the sand of the land, like the entire sky, a great big dome that is anything but his. He begins to feel the great longing of the girl, the great sorrow, the burdens of loss that have been placed upon her shoulders. He always wants to say something, say anything, but the girl is like a faraway mirage, a shadow that was never there.

The endless torrents of sea rage through his mind, and once on the waves the girl looks at him.

One morning he awakens to find no one by the window, no one with the round olive eyes, no one who's lonely presence pierced the night sky like the freedom that was never hers.