Thousand: Eight Hundred Twelve

Clutching the lock of hair in his hands, the grip getting slippier as his hands sweat, the soldier watches his mates standing at attention engulfed in flames. All that done, the god sets up her little messenger in a peacock chair woven from sheaves of wheat. She lays gently on his head a garland of thistle flowers and blackberries, the berries so ripe their purple-red juices leak onto the soldier’s pale forehead. The poor guy remembers nothing when he is discovered in the stinking, still smoking field. So it is with gods, never happy with an unambiguous message. Was the