The clouds were being driven out. They fled like startled sheep with the torn rags of their coats trailing behind them as they ran, as if they were preyed on by some strange wolf that only feeds on hair instead of meat. They were flying fantastically fast, and Vitek could only nod every so often in awareness of this change in weather. Lighting formed pink blemishes on the uniform pale horizon and healed by vanishing in the same action. Despite the clouds moving so fast, the trees were still and rested plainly.
This unnerved Vitek, the same primal, unnamable uneasiness a deer may feel when his environment is suddenly visited by an unknown presence. Watching the still earth and the blitzing sky made Vitek's head swell with recollection and shock.
He recalled a strange memory that his mind seemed to reject completely. He once came across a downed pilot, who spoke to him calmly despite his freshly mangled aircraft around him. Standing up from his broken fuselage, his goggles full of black oil, so his eyes could not be seen, pointing a fingerless finger up in the air.
"Time moves faster up there, down here it's so slow, I should be more careful..."
Vitek was unsure if the pilot even knew he was there listening. The most peculiar facet of this scene was that the pilot seemed to be completely uninjured besides his absent finger.
Vitek was now running with the clouds, head low so he could watch his feet as he sprang over unearthed clusters of grass. The rain did not so much fall as it was instead slung. The trees were now being pulled horizontally by the newborn green winds.
The rough scribbling pencil trails of lightning now reached him. The bolts were paradoxical, the shape of long withered twigs belonging to a skeleton's hand but pink like the featherless skin of a newly eclosed bird. They began to fall in a cage shape around the land, which to Vitek felt like the forever slender pink fingers of electricity were lifting up the mass of land he was standing on into the air. It was as if the great electronic mass was moving him closer to get a better look at him.
The air was beginning to turn green and set his body in a murky solution that ate at his stamina. He reached the position with a single hearty exhale and his superiors held out their hands as a father does when they are about to lift up their child, but they instead performed this as a gesture of silent sardonic questioning.
"We could have left," one says to Vitek.
"Were you picking flowers?" The second jeered.
Their waxed rain repellent cloaks made them look like old men wearing the skin of behemoth frogs. Their faces hidden, but their long wrinkled chins poked out from under their hoods like the stone beards of ancient statues. Vitek and some others piled onto a flatbed and both of the superiors went up to the driver and did not turn their heads to face him while talking. The shattering of the pink lightning made these lead-hearted men of war stick their feet together in apprehension and await what they all expected but feared anyway. They all stood away from the vehicles and anything that was metal which was hard to do as metal crates littered the field like stones. Vitek ignored his apprehension and remained on the metal platform in hopes he could leave a moment sooner knowing any second he could be annihilated.
The ominous voice of the lightning threatened to strike the flatbed, but Vitek knew the difference between the growl of feral lightning and the firm yet warm voice of God. He did not flee, but instead retrieved the wood crucifix from his pocket and held it gently in his fingers, like it was alive.
As the rattling of the storm drew circles around him, he held it closer to him and kept his eyeballs completely still in their sockets. The groaning of the electrified air made the deepest part of his soul desire to leap out and run up to the bolts of lightning. To clutch at the bottoms of them and plead like they were the feet of some glowing unearthly machine set on his vaporization alone, but he remained still.
The pink glow of lighting suddenly grew dull, the wind grew sluggish, the air regained its clarity, the trees stood up again, and the clouds were now past the treeline. The crucifix still in his tightly wound hands, pressed against the wall of his chest, which soothed his crazed beating heart on the other side.
The second superior was now patting the driver's shoulder through the window awkwardly and both meandered away, not turning to or from Vitek, staring straight ahead. The flatbed shuddered and advanced like a giant silvery slug. As it moved, more soldiers jumped in, with some laughing and some cursing. One looked at Vitek and shook his head.
"War is no place for fear, perhaps you are a coward?"
"Yes I am, but I fear no evil. The war is evil, it does not scare me," Vitek responded.
They drove as the storm vacated, and as it did, it reminded him of an incensed schoolmaster, alone in his building, slamming great books against the doors and walls and gibbering to himself, which grew quieter as he made it further down the hall. A living madness held in pink fingers, that instead of growing more distant seemed to grow more and more tired. Vitek saw that these fingers stood on their own, and belonged to no hand. These crooked twigs were not the fingers of God. God was already holding Vitek, His fingers gently collapsed around him.