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The war began before I was born, and for as long as I can remember, someone had been telling us it’s almost over.

When I was a kid, sitting in the factories, using my smaller hands to help put together the engine components of our bombers, the radio crackled peace talks half a world away in Ven. I can still recall the newspapers and their inky headlines, when I was a teenager, promising us we were just months away from forcing the enemy’s surrender.

And now? Now it’s their leaflets, dropped by the millions, coating every inch of our bombed-out cities and pitted wildernesses, telling us to give up because defeat is minutes away. On good days we use the leaflets for toilet paper or to start our cookfires. On bad days . . . on bad days each of us silently considers the offers of amnesty, sees the desperation in the eyes of our friends, and tries to remember the faces of the people we’re fighting for back home.

It’s early morning as Aleta and I crouch over our tiny campfire, hands practically buried in the flames for warmth while she coaxes the last bit of flavor from month-old coffee grounds. We shelter in the shade of a narrow canyon, cold but safe, and listen to the distant drone of enemy bombers heading toward Bava while the rest of the platoon gets some rest inside the caves we’ve called home for the last six months.

Aleta takes her pewter pitcher off the fire and sniffs the contents, giving me a hopeful smile. “It’ll be good today,” she says.

Coffee hasn’t been good for years, I want to respond. I bite my tongue. Aleta is twenty-nine, an old woman as far as the war is concerned, and widowed three times over. She can shoot better than anyone in the platoon, and sometimes her cooking actually has some zing to it. Unlike mine. Mine’s always shit.

Aleta has earned a little respect. I keep my bitter comments to myself and listen to the distant bombers. I haven’t heard the report of an explosion today, which means they’re dropping leaflets again.