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A Woman in Time - 1

There was no silence after the battle. The storm of blood was over, but the distant boom of shells still rolled like distant thunder over the trampled field. Rifle shots from the receding conflict popped like twigs in a hungry fire, but here there were only dying embers.  Christina coughed as she passed through a drifting cloud of sulfurous smoke.  Her knee-high boots were covered with the slick red mud she had been trudging through for the last hour or so. The beautiful blue coat commissioned for her by Lawrence in Vienna was speckled and torn, one sleeve nearly in half from when she had fought her way through the barbed tangles at the front line. What was left of the front line. She was beginning to grow desperate, the bitter lump of fear trying to lurch up into her throat was becoming harder to force back down. The murmuring groans of the injured and dying weren't helping, and the occasional wail of some unseen soldier threatened to make her lose her poise. She screamed suddenly into the fading light of the day.

"Lawrence! Answer me, Lawrence god damn you!" If she believed, even for a second, that he was truly gone, then she'd sink into the filthy sea of unlucky souls and die here with the rest of them, forever trapped in this historical hell...

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This one's for you babe. I'm going to stop here for tonight so I can let this stuff simmer a bit before moving forward.  I gotta figure out where I'm going to know how to proceed next. I'll be quick about it though, I'm trying not to take it so seriously that I don't actually write it.
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