near half-empty

Deimos Perhaps Deimos didn’t see the problem – surrounded by weaponry, munitions, battlefield roads, and insurmountable odds almost his entire life. Inexperience, ignorance, and the unknown were temporary issues (until something new came along), opportunities to grow, to prosper, to harness potential into more than just prowess. He hadn’t come into the world knowing how to wield a sword or how to draw a bow. He hadn’t marched into the training grounds with a ragtag bunch of other boys knowing much else but stances learned from his father, a few swings of wooden blades in fun and melee. Reality had slapped and stung them all in the face on the first day. So the General shrugged, remaining calm, composed, in the face of her confusion, exasperation, or whatever else seemed to be entangled in the here and now. “Then we find something. Come to the barracks when you are ready, and we can start from there.” No sense in miring towards apprehension or vitriol. It’d be better to try, to learn something, then do nothing at all. Reliance upon others wasn’t a grand or great defense. He listened still while going through pile after pile, sifting and churning, distracted from neither task. The only thing he recognized in her speech was the notion of pointing and shooting, and only courtesy of Adam. “A gun?” He intoned, almost proud to know what it was. “Adam has one.” But it’d been the only thing of its kind he’d ever seen – grown and plucked from a world with catapults and medieval diligence in their sway and assault. “Nothing is easy,” he retorted with the slightest of smirks; before that faltered and crumbled off too. “But at least you are willing.” Which was more than they could say for a multitude of beings sifting and sinking along. Libbs offering her pile a look through only caused him to shift slightly in her direction, long arms and large hands taking hold of some and dragging them over to his sanction, peeking through and through, as if were easy to process now, all his searching, all his deliberating. Then, one finally seemed to exist in his hold, a leaf entirely brown, decayed, and withered, but not crumbled to dust or debris yet. “Well done,” he extended to her, focus entirely on the frond as he gently removed it from the earth, retrieving a jar from his bag, and placing it within. Out of sight and out of mind Make everything alright So let the sky and sea collide Just not in our lifetime