He is slashing at me and I am raising my arms to keep knife away from my head and my chest. He is raising arm and bringing it down, and I block and twist his wrist, but he is dropping knife and catching it with other hand and stabbing, and I am moving out of the way, but he is cutting my shirt. I turn behind him and twist his arm, and it is making snapping sound. But snapping sound is also CLICK-CLACK of rifle behind me, and I know other bandit is going to shoot. So I spin around again, and bandit with knife is catching bullets with his body, and I am running using his body as shield and taking knife from him. And I am crashing into bandit with gun and raising knife and cutting his neck.

I am rolling to the side when new bullets are cutting line through ground straight for the bodies. And I am coming up to one knee and throwing knife at another bandit, and he is dropping and everything is being quiet again, not even mosquito or nanobot is buzzing.

Slowly, I am standing again and I am walking to pick up knife and take rifle and put it over my shoulder so it is hanging with shotgun, and I am picking through pockets for bullets and shells and putting them in my own pocket, and I am taking vests and other clothes and putting them on so I can hold more bullets and shells, and just as I am turning to go, I am seeing him.

He is boy. Vest is hanging off his bare chest that is all skin and bones. He is so small that gun he is holding is as big as him. And he is standing so still that not even my mind’s eye is detecting him. He is not glowing red like living things. When smoke clears, he is just boy covered in dust.

Even though he is not shooting at me or throwing knife, I know he is like me. He is child of war.

“You are not having to be like this,” I am telling him. And I am saying this out loud because Xifeng is saying I should practice talking but also because I am sometimes missing the sound of my own voice. So I am saying, “You are not just child of war.”

But the boy is silent.

“You are not needing gun to live.” I am looking for more words, because I know I am supposed to be saying more to this boy. “I am once being child of war, but I am learning of more way of being. Different way of being. Only killing and fighting when I must. To protect people. Some days, no killing and no fighting. I think before I am killing and fighting all the time, but I am not doing these thing all the time anymore.”