Another Victory!

BOOM!

The last of the explosions boomed so loudly, Eren held his hands to his ears.

The blasts took him by the feet and dragged him through the slick mud of memory - That one evening.

His mother holding a smoking shotgun with its barrel pointed heavenward.

The part of her face angled towards him was cast in shadow, and for a stark moment, he was stunned at how picturesque she was.

Like a statute, perfect and perfectly still.

Elizabeth Trost had started something resembling a garden at the back of their house. A pet project of sorts.

There were tomatoes in a corralled patch of loamy soil and reddened fruits bursting from the branches of pepper plants. A few stalks of corn swayed at the back too. Nothing nearly enough to be substantial.

She tended to it in the hours after work, gently, as though it was her child. A second child.

It calmed her, she claimed.

Eventually the garden bloomed into more than what she had planned for, and of course the birds came.

His mother made herself