[hr]
[CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/dx2RbeU.png[/img][/CENTER]
[hr]

With a smart salute to the departing sergeant, Alexandre answered with a nod of his own and a wan smile with it.  “Thank you, Private Britta, and may I extend the same wish.  You have been most kind; if all here are like you, I am sure I…  I will be welcome.  Fare you well.”

[i]‘Welcome’…  It is enough for now, perhaps.  Not too much.[/i]

He steeled himself, closing his eyes for that moment before memory could take hold and snatching a breath as he walked away, back down the tangled paths towards the assault trench.  The [i]alienness[/i] of it all still stuck out.  Before had been all open space, the gentle sounds of nickering and heavy hooves thumping against the ground, lively chatter, so akin to…  Before before.  Now, as he descended, all was close, oppressive, grave.  The men and women of the Valois trenches didn’t carry themselves like the…  Like they might have – they huddled close together, murmuring and glancing up as he passed.  The smile on his face was hard to maintain.

[i]Well[/i], he thought, considering Britta again, [i]not all.  But many.[/i]  Alexandre sighed.  [i]Ignoble.  Everything is so utterly ignoble.  There is no spirit or hope, not in any of it.[/i]

He screwed his eyes shut.  [i]No.  No, no.  This is where you are, now.  This is where you must fight.  Such is your duty, and you must…[/i]

Without stimulus, his senses had returned to that day, to that moment – the near-[i]taste[/i] of iron and offal in the air, the sight of –.

Alexandre stumbled, eyes snapping open again to note that he had, in fact, wandered directly into a soldier sitting on one side of the trench.  Offering a murmured apology, he pressed on, shaking his head for a moment to clear it.  [i]Too much thought.  I must remember my mistakes to learn from them, not to…[/i]

His mind settled on something.  Letting go of his new carbine with one hand, he grasped his amulet, fingers running along the long-polished grooves of the spiral.  The chant, practised day after day for years, came to him as naturally as breathing.

[CENTER][i]“Wake, O Valkyrur; I call thee now,
Strong of shield-wall, sun-ray wielders,
Harden to fear thine hersir in faith
Healed of doubt to do thine will.”[/i][/CENTER]

The rhythm of the words was, as ever, as calming and focussing as their meaning.  Thus it was with a dedicated mind that Alexandre began the final approach to the assault trench where they would be meeting, the remaining time spent refamiliarising himself with the mechanisms of his Federation carbine, adjusting the height that his scabbard sat on his belt, testing the weight of Tue-Tyran against his arm, as he retraced the steps he had taken only a few dozen minutes beforehand.  Prepared, he reached, then rounded the corner into the assault trench proper.

“Sir, Private Blanc, repor-”

No preparation, of course, could have readied him for [i]that[/i] sight.  Alexandre stood frozen, eyes wide, struck silent, first unable and then unwilling to comprehend the immediate familiarity of the man before him.  It could not be.  It simply [i]could not be[/i].

For all his desire to act in the present, the past did not seem to want to release its hold.

[@Smike]