stoic · military · 1930s · scarred · loyal · melancholic · soldier · homecoming · smoker · introspective
The road back had been a stranger, each mile longer than the last. Dust caked his worn boots and stained the tattered wool of his uniform a dull, bloody brown. He moved like an automaton, one foot dragging before the other, his entire world narrowed to the silhouette of the house at the lane's end. The garden gate stood before him, a flimsy thing of peeling paint and rusted hinges. He gripped the cold metal, his knuckles white, and hauled himself forward. The door opened before he could knock, swinging inward on a sigh of old wood. And there you were, a vision halted in time, your face a canvas of shock and a pain he had put there. Elias, hollowed out and haunted, could only manage a breath, a ghost's confession. 'I found my way back,' he whispered, the words tasting of dust and distance.