[b]Shusha, Armenia[/b]

A few kilometers south of the regional capital of Stepanakert was the town of Shusha. Nestled in the Karabakh mountains, the town was home to only 8,000 people. Many had fled westward to Stepanakert during the 1978 war, to what had become a hub for transportation and communications and trade. What was left of Shusha was a farming town, and the Abbasian family owned a small farmhouse on the outskirts. It lay upon an ancient road, winding through the mountains. The squat, green building was built at the top of a hill overlooking a valley below - today it was shrouded in the April fog and a light rain had fallen recently. The region was certainly lush, unlike the deserts of West Armenia that Haroud Abbasian had just returned from. He had taken a train from Yerevan to Stepanakert that zipped around Lake Sevan to the mountainous Lachin Corridor - the only route through the mountains that formed the natural provincial border between the Artsakh and Erivan regions. Their father had been there to meet them at the Stepanakert train station, welcoming his son with a bear hug and a pat on the back. After their greetings, the family piled into their beat-up, rear-engined jalopy of a sedan and began the hour's drive to their hometown.

Haroud was still exuberant over the parade. He had ridden in the tank with Zokarski and company, waving a saber around and tossing sweets to children. After the parade was over, he drank with his friends one last time before his mother urged him to get to the train station. By nightfall, he was sound asleep in the rattling car and headed back home. Administratively, the Army was separating him - his company had been deactivated earlier in the week and he was technically now a reservist. Practically, it meant he could go home. He would end up mailing his documents to Yerevan at a later date. For now, his career in lumber awaited. Shusha was home to many forests, all of which were on the verge of being eagerly exploited by companies slowly let loose from national control. Lumber was important for rebuilding, and Haroud had been a truck driver for the Shusha Lumber Company before his deployment. With the new spots in actual, physical lumberjack jobs, Haroud was planning to get a start in sometime in the next week. He figured that lumber would provide an exciting career - danger, exercise, and travel. Many of his friends had mixed feelings about leaving the service: Haroud felt the same, mostly because he didn't want a job in an office somewhere. Combat - or, more specifically, adrenaline - was a high that many couldn't live without.

The sedan pulled into the rocky driveway on the hill and the family piled out. Haroud's little sister went toddling to the house as he watched, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His father, dressed in his western garb of a sweater over a dress shirt and tie, came up behind him. He smiled warmly at his son and then looked back at the house. It was two stories tall and had a wooden porch facing the valley. A metal awning came over the driveway as a sort of open garage, with bicycles on racks in front of it. Everything was as picturesque as can be, right down to the meticulously tended garden the Haroud's mother had almost certainly slaved away at to impress him when he arrived. He had the mind to tell her that anything was better than a sandy trench or a rattling armored vehicle, but the flowers did indeed look amazing. So he kept his mouth shut as he entered the house. The door opened up and a shape moved from within: Haroud's dog had leaped out from the entrance and sprung straight towards her boy. The Alabai Shepherd rammed her head straight into Haroud's stomach, effecting a stumble backwards. Then she moved to leap up onto her hind feet and flail her paws onto the son's chest. She whined her high-pitched crying whine, overjoyed to finally see Haroud home again.

"Yes, hi! Hello, puppy girl!" Haroud cooed. "How has little Arev been? How have you been?"

The dog panted and whined, trying to lick Haroud's neck and face. She was a big dog, for sure. She went up to his chest on her hind legs.

"She's grown," Haroud's father said. "She was a puppy when you left, remember!"

"And she's much better than our goats that we used to have for company," Haroud grinned. "I wish we had a dog just like little Arev."

"She's so excited!" called out Haroud's sister. "She almost knocked you over!"

"She did better than the Turks could," joked Haroud's father. "Not a scratch on you until you come home and Arev cuts your forearm."

Haroud smiled at his father, then looked down at his wrist to see a tiny scratch that didn't even bleed. "Oh, boy, you're lethal!" teased Haroud to the dog. "You're worth the whole Turkish Army put together!"

Arev dropped back down to all fours and rubbed her head on Haroud's uniform pants. Almost immediately, her black-and-white fur began to stick to the fabric and Haroud remembered that no outfit is complete without a healthy coat of dog hair - something that he had thankfully lacked during his stay in Erzurum. NCOs were never fans of deviation from the uniform standard, much less anything that could possibly degrade their appearance and turn him into a "useless piece of dishonorable shit." So he reached down to scratch Arev's ears while commanding her to sit. Calmed down and more at ease now that the initial excitement had subsided from her short attention span, the dog obeyed. With the pet sufficiently satisfied with Haroud's return, the son made his way up the hill and into his family's house while the dog padded along in tow. The green building towered above the road below, white roof gently sloped towards the southern mountains. A porch made its way around the exterior underneath an awning. It was truly picturesque. Windows with varied curtains looked down upon the hill, and a small yellow flag hung besides the front door. It bore a single black star denoting Haroud's deployment - an increasingly-popular item to display in front of patriotic houses. As the family entered, Haroud's mother tore it off the wall and bundled it underneath her arm. Her son was home again.

The living room was filled with the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, the cups clustered on top of an ancient silver platter from the early 19th century. This was located on top of a handcarved wooden coffee table that had been bought in Stepanakert many years ago. This was atop a dulled Armenian carpet that was something of a family heirloom. A sofa sat to the immediate right of the door at the far left of the room, directly opposite a smoldering fireplace. Photographs hung from the wall behind the sofa, depicting the family and their ancestors in a chronological order. Framed on the coffee table was a framed, sepia-tinted photograph featuring Haroud in his battledress, helmet draped lazily over the side of his head, holding his arm around a shirtless David Goverian's shoulder. Sitting on the floor was Zokarski, also shirtless and helmeted and grinning for the camera while holding a light machine gun in his lap. Haroud had noticed the picture almost immediately and remembered that he had sent it to his mother almost six months ago. A small handwritten note accompanied the pose of three friends, reading: "Dear mother: I found the best comrades in arms that a man could ask for. It's not so bad on the front, anyways. November, 1979." Picking it up, he smiled warmly and remembered the friends that he had left behind when he left. Was Goverian still in a hospital somewhere? He had been blinded by shell fragments, so possibly. Haroud decided that he would need to find him when he had the chance.

Haroud's mother had returned from the kitchen with a platter of small cakes to place on the table with the coffee. She looked up at Haroud, noticing his stiff posture and smiling. "Oh, come now!" she insisted. "You're no longer in the Army. Relax a little!"

"Oh, right," Haroud noted somewhat embarrassingly. "Sorry, I'm used to being told what to do all the time."

"Then sit down on the sofa, sweetie," said his mother. She sat down on the far side of the sofa and gave a pat for her son to sit next to her. Then, in her sweetly accented voice, she said: "I have so much to tell you about. Nine months is a long time."

[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

Yaglian lived in an apartment building at the end of a circular plaza atop a hill at Joint Base Sevan Lake. His top-floor room had everything he could have needed: a bed, a radio, a kitchenette, [I]some[/I] space, and a roommate who worked the night shift. The walls of Yaglian's room was decorated with some movie posters and a large, bullet-riddled Chechen flag draped across the wall next to his door. He had acquired the peculiar item from the contraband of a captured militant and decided to take it with him to display. If others did it, why couldn't he? Underneath the Chechen flag was the militant's Tsarist-era rifle - a Kalash. Those certainly were uncommon around Chechens, so Yaglian decided to "liberate" that as well. The rifle was supported by a shelf that he had built for it: the trophy rack that exuded victory despite the fact that his front had largely been shafted into obscurity. There was no romance in guarding the border and occasionally arresting meth traffickers. And now he was in an even more mundane position as he stood guard around an Army and Air Force runway in the middle of the tri-base area of Yerevan, Sevan, and Gyumri.

The Saturday began early for Yaglian as he fried some dough on his gas stove in his fatigue pants and undershirt while listening to some of the local radio. The soft, melodious tone of Armenian folk instrumentals filled the air and went out the windows, open to the warm spring air. The smell of frying dough, indeed, complemented the relaxed atmosphere. Yaglian's roommate, who had stumbled in an hour ago smelling of dirt and marsh with an explanation that he had inexplicably fallen out of the bed of a pickup truck while on his way back home, was sleeping in his boxers on the couch and drooling over the nice upholstery. The roommate was a Greek who spoke little Armenian, often gesturing his way through conversations while Yaglian attempted to pantomime what he was trying to convey. There seemed to be a lot of such personnel in the military, grouped oftentimes into their own units for cohesion. Now that the war was over, Yaglian was fairly sure that many of the Greeks and Russians were going to be discharged unless they could integrate with the regular army. He had heard rumors, though, of an organization in the planning stages: a regiment composed solely of foreigners. But that was just the rumor mill, and nobody could actually care. Discharge or segregation: Yaglian cared little. Maybe his new roommate wouldn't drool over the couch while his BDUs sat, smelling like rotten marsh in the laundry hamper. However, Yaglian's musings were interrupted by the dinging of his little mechanical egg-timer, and the dough was ready to be eaten.

Breakfast went by quickly as Yaglian ate fast as to not disturb the sleeping Greek in his living room. Dusting off the powdered sugar from his telnyashka's striped fabric, he decided to check the mail: he had sent a letter out to a few clubs the previous Wednesday to ask if they could schedule him in for a Saturday night performance. He didn't know what to expect, though: would his contributions to the musical fusions be applauded? Already he had picked up some ideas from the stuff his roommate listened to. He had heard the sounds of Ethiopia, of Syria, of Georgia. Sevan was an immigrant town, producing a culture distinctly its own. This is why he had requested a transfer here, even if the job was terrible and his career had pretty much ended. He had been feeling conflicted about his musical career, however. It'd be silly of him to think that he'd turn out to be a star. He'd just as likely be a starving artist. But the chance was still there, and Yaglian was trying his best to seize the day. After all, if he failed he'd still be living comfortably with a Corporal's paycheck for the next few years and if he succeeded he'd be snorting cocaine off of prostitutes in the luxury hotels downtown. He often joked that there was no way he could lose. And his dream was revealed to be closer than he thought when he saw a letter in his apartment's mailbox from a club on the outskirts of the city: it was the Dead Soldier's Den.

They had agreed to take him for the night, seeing as they needed an act to perform after one of their performers had been rendered unavailable. There had been a murder nearby the other day, and Yaglian wondered if that might have been it. But there was no reason to dwell on it: the Corporal had his foot in the door. And with the letter in hand, Yaglian climbed the stairs back to his apartment and slept on the couch for a few hours. He was on at eleven, Saturday night. He had plenty of time.