A brighter afterthought

The open field. The slight simmer of the tiltilating sunlight. The blades of grass swaying against each other.

Reminisce captures Diederich into a daze.

He relives his childhood which takes him far yonder into a little village of Balzer, Russia.
As German immigrants in the country, his family oversaw a small patch of Russian meadow alongside the Volga River.

Rural Russia educated the young Diederich with a vocation of grazing his family's sheep on these luscious green moors.
It was on these vocational wanderings that he would lead his herd to the crest of the meadows and there he would close his eyes.
Facing the sun with his eyes closed, he would pry them open a little while afterword.

This made his world seem brighter so he had thought.

The sky became clearer. The grass greener. And even his sheep resembled the skien of the whitest yarn that his mother weaved for family clothing.

That was the past.

Twenty years later, standing at a crest of a hill far away from his village in Russia, Diederich's eyes are closed.
A question "Would the world seem brighter if I opened them?" repeatedly nudges his inner self. "Does it?" continued the nudge.

Then as if the question nudged him a little too hard, he opens his eyes. Yes, his childhood find still stands true!
The blood looked more crimson. His uniform screamed of the blood smeared on it. The corpses of fallen comrades around him - lifeless.

His eyes do not fail him yet. The horde of enemy battalion is advancing toward Diederich from the nearby crest.

How he had wished to make the war just disappear; to just close his eyes and open them: seeing his world being brighter and livelier than ever.

His Luger. It has fired its fair share of bullets so he had thought.
Pointing the Luger to his temple, Diederich shuts his eyes and prays that his new world does not disappoint.