The library remains quiet in a way that feels imposed rather than natural. The slave-soldiers of company 204th sit at long tables under high windows, backs straight by habit, hands moving with mechanical patience. Ink replaces chalk today. Paper stacks with hides for notebooks pile unevenly beside elbows and forearms. The scratching of pens becomes the dominant sound, thin and persistent, like insects hidden in walls.
Probably some boring calculus.
A page turns too loudly. Someone pauses, rubs his eyes, then resumes writing. No one complains. No one jokes. The discipline stays even when no officer watches closely. The stillness presses down, heavy but familiar.
Aldo passes once between the tables, boots quiet on stone. He does not stop. He does not correct posture. He only observes the rhythm of work and moves on. [They don't need pressure right now,] he thinks. [They need something to fill the time.]
Outside, the light is different—thinner, less filtered. Wind moves freely across open ground.
Meanwhile, the farmland lies exposed under the sky, wide and colorless. Hano and Aldo walk side by side at first, then drift apart by a few steps without noticing. Their boots disturb dry soil that gives too easily, collapsing under pressure.
They stop.
Hano crouches first. He reaches down, scoops a handful of earth, and squeezes. The dirt does not clump. It crumbles, slipping through his fingers in weak strands.
"We're just survey…like this ?" Hano sighs, shoulders sagging as he lets the soil fall.
Aldo crouches beside him. He mirrors the motion—hand into the ground, fingers closing. The soil offers no resistance.
"Yeah, technically, we could." Aldo squeezes a handful of dirt, watching it break apart. "Degraded soil."
He says it without judgment, as if reading a measurement from an instrument. He pulls a notebook from his coat and writes it down anyway. The pencil moves slowly, deliberate.
The wind passes over them, stirring nothing.
Hano stays crouched, eyes drifting over the land. His gaze moves left, right, behind, in front of him. He sees shallow lines in the earth—old channels, half-erased by time. The faint scars of an irrigation system that once existed.
"If so, we should focus on the irrigation first…" Hano says. His voice trails off as he looks again, searching for something more solid. There is nothing. Just traces. Ghosts of planning.
Aldo does not answer immediately. He closes the notebook and straightens slightly, still crouched.
"It is 50 km away from us to the nearest river," Aldo says at last.
The words come out heavier than intended. [Too far,] he thinks. [Too inefficient.]
"52.6 km to be exact," Hano adds, reflexively.
He stands up, brushing dirt from his palms, then looks back across the field. The land stretches outward, empty, unresponsive.
"Or we could store water from the rain," Hano says suddenly, turning to Aldo. "This region has rain though !"
Aldo stands as well. He follows Hano's gaze upward, to the open sky. Clouds drift slowly, indifferent.
"Okay." Aldo nods once. "We're done now. Let have a rest."
He turns and walks away without ceremony, boots leaving shallow prints that fade almost immediately.
Hano watches him go. He hesitates, then does not follow.
Hano continues to wander the farmland alone, his figure small against the wide, exhausted stretch of earth. The ground around him lies barren and tired, extending outward in all directions as though it has long since given up the effort to grow anything. The soil is pale and cracked, hardened by neglect rather than violence. Nothing moves across it except the wind and the quiet shadow of his passing.
Only one structure interrupts the emptiness: a stable, half-collapsed and slowly surrendering to time. Its wooden beams are warped and darkened with age, their surfaces rough and splintered. Stones along the base have shifted and sunk unevenly into the earth, creating crooked lines where there were once straight foundations. It does not look shattered or burned, not the result of any sudden catastrophe. Instead, it appears forgotten—left behind gradually, allowed to decay without anyone bothering to return. It feels less destroyed than abandoned.
Beyond the stable, the forest begins.
The forest is the only part of this farmland that feels alive in any meaningful way. Unlike the empty fields or the failing structure, it does not look as though it requires tending. The trees rise upright without scaffolding or repair. Their roots grip the soil firmly, holding it together where the open land has cracked apart. Leaves murmur softly overhead, brushing against one another in quiet conversation. The forest does not demand maintenance or supervision. It exists on its own terms, self-contained and sufficient.
Hano turns toward it and walks.
The air shifts the moment he passes beneath the canopy. Light fractures into scattered fragments, breaking apart into pale shards that slip through layers of leaves. The ground softens under his boots, cushioned by years of fallen foliage. Even sound changes—muted and absorbed by bark and moss, as though the forest is careful about what it allows to echo.
He moves deeper, nudging aside fallen branches with slow, steady steps. Without realizing it, his breathing eases. The tension in his shoulders loosens. Each step feels less calculated, less restrained by the rigid awareness that usually governs him.
As he walks, memories surface without warning.
The damp scent of earth pulls him backward through time. He remembers wandering through a forest near his grandparents' house on Earth—narrow paths shaped by repetition, by countless small feet passing over them. He remembers sunlight filtering through leaves there too, warm and patient. He remembers insects humming lazily in the thick air of summer afternoons.
He remembers playing games with his friends among the trees—running without direction, shouting until their voices cracked, pretending to be lost only to find each other again moments later. He remembers school field trips that felt unbearably dull at the time: teachers lecturing endlessly while he half-listened, half-stared at the trees, waiting for lunch or the bus ride home.
All of it had seemed ordinary then. Small. Forgettable.
Now those memories press against him with an unexpected weight.
[I thought those days were tedious,] he thinks as he steps carefully over a fallen log. [I didn't know they were something I'd miss.]
His pace slows. Then he stops altogether.
The silence around him is not complete, but it is deep. Wind threads through leaves overhead. Somewhere far off, a bird calls once and then again. His own breathing rises and falls in steady rhythm.
For a moment, he closes his eyes.
[A mere slave-soldier,] the thought arrives unbidden. [In an unfamiliar land.]
The words sting—but less here than they do elsewhere.
He places a hand against the trunk of a nearby tree, feeling the rough bark beneath his palm. It is solid and indifferent. It does not care about decrees, surveys, ranks, or calculations. It simply exists.
He lets himself sink into that indifference, into the familiarity of nature. For a time, he allows the forest to surround him completely.
Time stretches without shape. There are no urgent commands. No echoing orders. No scratching pens or measured assessments. Only the steady presence of trees, the muted rustle of leaves, and the quiet current of memory moving through him.
Eventually, he resumes walking, this time without choosing a particular direction. He follows no path and seeks no destination. The forest neither welcomes nor rejects him. It simply allows him to pass.
Gradually, the quality of light begins to change. Shadows lengthen between the trunks. The air cools, brushing faintly against his skin. The sun lowers toward the horizon, its glow threading between trees at a shallow angle. Gold softens into amber, amber into a muted gray.
Hano stops once more. Slowly, he turns in place, taking in the arrangement of trees, the scent of damp leaves, the layered quiet—trying to fix it in his memory as if it might disappear.
He exhales, long and controlled.
Then he turns back the way he came.
And he leaves.