SHE ARRIVED A few days before the blood seeped into the sand. Three hundred, maybe four hundred meters stood between the outpost and the bus station with the white chalk graffiti announcing You’ve reached the end of the world, and by the time she had covered the distance, the rumor about the mysterious soldier was already whistling throughout the outpost like a bullet.

Cleaning duty was immediately suspended.

One after the other we let go of our brooms, garbage bags, and plastic bottles filled with sand and cigarette butts, and stared as she approached us in black boots, a camera hanging around her neck and white sunglasses that gleamed in the distance.

Even Yanai, who was on guard duty, rushed out of the security booth at the gate. He looked in the cracked mirror hanging outside the door, straightened his tactical vest, and ran his hand over his buzz cut. Then he winked at us and said, “This one. This one’s going to be my wife.”

By the time she made it to the security gate, half the platoon was waiting for her. We stood elbow to elbow while Yanai opened the iron gate that screeched nervously. She slid up her white sunglasses, wiped the sweat off her face, and revealed a strange pair of eyes. One blue, one brown.

“Finest girl who’s ever stepped foot in the outpost,” someone whispered, and we nodded.

“Welcome to Neptune,” Yanai greeted her.

“Why Neptune?” she asked, as he was probably planning all along.

“Rumor has it that this outpost is as far from planet Earth as Neptune, if not farther,” he replied, and she started laughing a split second before he completed the sentence, as if she was used to these kinds of jokes. Then she said that she served in the military newspaper unit, which we hadn’t even known existed until that moment. She said her job was to travel to outposts all over the country and find soldiers with interesting stories.

“And why are you here, princess?” Yanai asked.

“For you, prince,” she sneered, and said she had traveled here all the way from a kibbutz in the Golan Heights, which was covered in snow these days. She had heard there was a soldier in our platoon who graduated with a law degree from the most prestigious university in England and had left everything behind to enlist in the IDF. She explained that was a story people would want to hear, and then looked to her left, at us, and asked if anyone knew where she could find him. I noticed a ladybug tattoo on her neck.

We all knew who she was looking for, but no one was in a rush to answer; maybe because we feared that if we told her, she’d vanish as quickly as she had appeared.