Purl & Java

I had a dream last night that I was a poor villager long ago in place a lot like England. There was a civil war that had ravaged the country side, and the people were starving. Most of the villagers were dead, but the ones who survived were the ones who learned that the soldiers on the battlefield would often stand there staring and shouting at each other for hours before a single shot was fired, so the villagers could weave in and out of the ranks on either side gathering wild strawberries and mushrooms when a battle took place in a meadow they depended on for food.

One day the war came to my village, and I watched as my family and friends went out to gather strawberries and mushrooms. The older girls, mothers, wise women tried their best to skirt around the edges of the battle like nervous chipmunks. The boys too young to hold a gun thought of nothing but, "Mushrooms!"

We were starving.

On this particular day, the game of Russian roulette that the villagers played on the battlefield landed on a bullet.

Did someone fire amiss?

Were the generals impatient with the ignorant villagers?

For the villagers, rhyme or reason didn't matter: They found themselves caught in the middle of a battle.

I screamed for them, but it was too late. All I could do was run from the battlefield pulled by the hand of an older woman I didn't know.

When we came back that evening, we found the bodies of our friends and families strewn around the field, but the bodies of the soldiers had been dutifully buried. We were helpless to bury the entire village, so we constructed a makeshift crypt out of the cellar of the cottage that had once been my home.

We locked the door and went away, leaving all we loved with strawberries and mushrooms still in their hands and mouths.

Kyrie Eleison.