Soul Searching. Part One

The old man asked him, 'Have you ever thought what you must have been like before the war? What you may have looked like. How about your soul? Have you ever wondered about it?' The soldier stared blankly out into the black and withered desert landscape of what use to be a world teeming with life. A world he knew once, but forgot once the war began what must have been centuries ago. "No...I mean...not until I saw the look on that human's face as he lay there...dying. I saw his life leave his body, and for a moment I wondered how that must feel? I thought of all those I have fought along side with for countless years, they never had that look when they died, they merely stopped moving and rotted off..." The bare muscle on the soldiers bones began to tighten, the sound reminded the soldier how withered and old and covered in dust they were. The old man began to speak again, "It is strange, because before we met, I would have never thought that creatures like yourself ever "wondered" or thought at all for that matter. Strange now that I meet you before my own death comes to take me away, and strange that from me are you to find out about the existence of your soul. Maybe there is indeed hope for both of us afterall." Both paused a moment, the wind made a subtle sound, much like the sound of distant wolves that come to eat the flesh of the dead, it was a brutal reminder to both of them of the world they live in. "Yes strange." The soldier thought how strange that a ghoul and a living man, his enemy for hundreds of years, found themselves conversating maybe for the first time since the war began, and not about the weather or what gun is better at killing a man from afar, like so many conversations before, but about life...and souls. Imagine that!

And indeed the soldier did, and he did not understand why, but he was on a mission, not for anyone else, but for himself. Something inside his tired body awoke that day he saw death whisk that man away. It was a day like any other he thought, 'killing and moving, killing and moving' but for the first time he watched his enemy grasp for life until that mans last breath made the soldier cringe, and suddenly, he felt an emotion for the first time. Fear. Fear for that man, and for the rest of his kind, and more importantly, fear of himself. And since that day, he has been compelled to feel again, to find this fabled "soul" that humans spoke of so beautifully. 'Beauty' he thought, never before did that word inspire him to find anything, and now it is his mantra...