The Attack of the Soldiers

The dark and dubious forest was framed with reeds and spiky trees from which the razor ivy climbed.

Fungi adorned their pillars, bracken wove its way in a thick and knotty tangle, scratching her skin as she tentatively made her way through to higher ground.

Hannah had gone only a little way into the foothills when she was set upon. The attack of the soldiers was fast. They had come upon her from behind.

The danger of this happening had not been within her naive catalogue of possibility.

Hannah’s family had comprised of gentle folk with sober ways, and her schooling about marriage and its coupling, had never been explained. They had saved her from the thrust of it, for it was assumed that a maiden's purity was protected by her innocence, and that such information should wait its proper time.

With one slap she was felled to the ground. So shocked were her senses, all of a sudden, she became displaced. It was as though her soul had temporarily abandoned her body, just to escape the soldiers’ brutal invasion.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances