Desert Treasure

[t0l]

It was totally worth it. No matter how long he’d be regulated to cleaning duty at the mess hall, no matter what other punishments Hawken had lined up for his “deviant behavior in the line of duty”, hell, she could do whatever she wanted to him for all he cared at this point: he had already won.

Hearts and minds had been won with only four one-syllable words, a feat that not even humanity’s best and brightest could boast to have accomplished. His delayed, monotone over had only solidified him as a deity of sorts amongst the shipping container-dwelling inhabitants of Forward Operating Base “Nodtvie, a nickname coined by “ass-kisser” Nova Hawken.

Tal swept some more sand out of the mess hall with his broom, coughing as his overpowered strokes sent particles of coarse sand flying every which way. It’d been two years since he’d been forced to clean like this, and it certainly took some getting used to, but he was definitely getting into the groove of things.

While he swept, a blast of cold air hit him from behind, and he was reminded that the mess hall was the only structure on this side of the segregated FOB to have functional environmental control systems. Just a step away from the enterance, sunlight shined brightly onto a path of paved sand, and for a second Tal wondered in what universe that this was considered a punishment. Honestly, he felt bad for his buddies, who were probably being herded around like sheep by Hawken right now.

A mercenary came stomping past Tal while he was busy bathing in his victory, creating large, beige stamps all over where he’d just swept with the fury of a thousand suns. Unfortunately, he was too late to react, and when he turned to find out what all the ruckus was about, the damage had already been done. All he could do now was stare at the man’s back with pure disdain in his eyes. “Prick,” he grumbled, leaning forwards onto his sturdy broom, rubbing against the callouses on his palms that were resurfacing in the presence of manual labor. Whatever, it wasn’t like a little bit of sand was gonna keep him down.

A different mercenary suddenly brushed past him, uttering a quick “sorry” as he continued on to the food lines, leaving a serious of much smaller stamps in his wake. Tal rolled his eyes, refrained from saying anything that would get him into further trouble, and went right back to sweeping at yet another careless man’s bootprints. Once he’d brushed a good majority of the coarse sand grains back outside, he went back to an idle position by the door, leaning on his broomhandle, sighing to himself as he looked outside with much longing.

For a split second, he wished he was aimlessly combing the desert with his buddies, since then they were all able to embrace the poor quality of life on Nauru together.

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