Chapter 181 Hold you while you wait
He took the route which led him to his wife's private storage area. According to Tion, she had been in there with her maids for quite a few minutes just filling up boxes with things.
"You can leave," he dismissed the maids as soon as he entered the storage room. It was a brightly lit room where his wife stocked what she called doomsday emergency supplies. It was stocked full with long lasting food stuffs, camping equipment, deactivated robot butlers, weapons and other items. Why she did not simply keep these things in her storage bracelet on her wrist he did not know.
"Scar," he called her. But she did not hear him because she had those large headsets on her ears. She could buy smaller ones, others could even be implanted directly beneath the skin behind the ears but no, his wife insisted on using large head sets which were now becoming quite common on the Blue star especially among the teenagers who found it cool to walk around with such things on their heads while they pocketed. Lately, they would even add a lollipop and walk around looking pretentious.
She was stuffing noodles into a large box, counting them and writing down in a small note book. Everything his wife did was ancient, she preferred physical books to online ones, writing with a device called a pen rather than typing into her terminal. She liked driving her manually operated car instead of driving the new solar and energy stone powered self driving cars.
She sent out physical emails to the ministers of the blue star. Small things which she did here and there made him wonder why and kept her on his mind a lot of the time. It almost seemed as if she had witnessed with her own eyes how the ancient people lived.
She was singing loudly, a song about someone meeting another on the East side and they would see each other in a city where the sun don't set. A small part of him wondered whether he should correct her by reminding her that the correct use of the word was 'does not set' and not 'don't set.' But then again, she spoke many words differently a lot of the time because she claimed they were better this way.?Esong squatted down and pulled the headphones gently from her head. Her head looked up and she saw his face which in return caused hers to glow up with a smile." You are here!, help me decide which things you and your men will need that I have left out. I am packing up as much as I can get my hands on but I doubt it will be enough after all there are millions of mecha warriors but my supplies are limited. So, I am packing for around a maximum of two thousand people and it will take you around two and a half months...."
She was still talking when his mouth came down on hers, effectively sealing off her words.?He basically shut her up with a kiss.
"What was that for?" she asked when his mouth left hers. "Not that I don't like it, feel free to shut me up that way always."
"It's a thank you." he answered.
"What for?" she asked.
"For being the most amazing woman I have known. I know that you are worried bout the food being enough for winter on our planet and yet you are still sending supplies to the warriors. The ministers are worried about their own families and stomachs but you are worried others." he tapped her nose playfully.
"The mecha warriors will be fighting for the rest of us, our lives depend on them sacrificing theirs, a few supplies like this can barely feed half of them. I wish that I could actually do more." she sighed, wishing with every beat of her heart that she could sincerely do more for them.
"Maybe your prayers will save more than a few." he replied. "I was told that you packed away many of those blessed pendants from the temple."
She nodded, she knew that many of them did not believe but she packed them in case they decided to wear them anyway. They held images of the deity of the afterlife. If any mecha warrior wearing one of the pendants died this winter, they would be fast tracked to the top of the reincarnation list or whatever was behind the gates that only the dead souls went through. As long as she saved as many of them from being stuck here, it was a good thing.
Severus had told her that soul eaters would be active, they were never far from battle fields or any place that smelled like death. Her winter was going to be a busy one and she would probably bump into Esong a few times as a grim reaper.
"I am wearing mine.' he pulled down the collar of his shirt and showed her the longevity and peace pendant she had given him. "We could always use all the luck we can get in these battles because we never know what's coming."
She touched his cheek and stared at him with an amorous look in her eyes. Many of the things she wanted to say, she could not really express because they would lead into the unknown and in such a bad time when he was just about to leave. There were more important things that the insecurities in her heart. "Are you afraid?" she asked.
Esong grabbed her hand, keeping it at his cheek and he rubbed his face against it, slowly. "Which man is not afraid of death?" he responded.
"The one who knows there is after life." she replied and she laughed softly. "Sorry, wrong joke, I don't know." She was feeling as if she had not said the most appropriate thing.
"It actually helps." He said,?"and I think Tion should be on television telling the people such a message. It will give more mecha warriors strength and hope knowing that we will simply not fade into nothing when we die. I once held the hands of a very brave and promising twenty one year old warrior as he died. The kid was young, he had no business being on the battlefield but his noble family wanted all the perks and glory that come with having a mecha warrior in the family. As he was bleeding out, the kid asked me, what's going to happen to me? I couldn't reply because I didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell him you are going into the darkness and your body is going to be cremated and sit in the hall of foreign heroes. I just told him to close his eyes and go to sleep.?If you had been around back then or maybe if we believed in life after death, I would just tell the kid, I will see you in your next life and he would die hopeful. That kid was scared as he was dying, I saw that fear and I remember it vividly. I don't watch anymore when my men die because those eyes haunt you."
He looked so pained as he talked about the death of his men that Scarlet felt so sad for him. She reached up and hugged him tightly, Esong was a man that had buried so much pain inside. Did no one on this world consider the role of psychologists? These people needed to talk some of these things out. "Let's go to our room, Fey can pack everything else up, I was almost done anyway. I will simply hold you tonight and we can just be together while we wait for the morning to come."