Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty

He looked at the youthful photo his sister had taken.
He recalled staring into the lamp at dusk, prayerfully pondering Providence.

* * *
The recruiter had come swiftly, taking him off to join the military.
War; carnage; promotion followed.
Decades later, nominally the same but radically altered, he stood in that field, peering back at his youthful self.
“You’ve acquitted yourself well,” the rock did not say.
“Striving for the good,
mercy where you should,
peace where you could,
strength where evil stood.
Now you know that rarest thing for a warrior: rest.”
Long after his memory passed, that rock would remain.

via Darleen