My farm has been in my family for seven generations. It was self-sufficient, producing enough food to last through winter. I focused on raising livestock like cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, alongside growing crops like barley, oats, and rye, with vegetables like cabbage, beans, and onions, all while utilizing a system of mixed farming. Where grazing land was integrated with cultivated fields. The family homestead consisted of cabin where I resided, and various outbuildings for storage and animals.

When the Balkan war broke out, I saw it as an opportunity to gain a new sense of purpose, and to escape difficult and personal circumstances. Though now I wish I hadn’t. The things I’ve witnessed and done, it was nothing to be proud of. Let alone be rewarded for with a medal. My hands will forever be stained with blood that I will never be able to wash off. God will never forgive me. For I can’t even find it in myself to forgive me.

When I returned home, it didn’t bring me the peace that I thought it would. The war had changed me in ways I couldn't fully grasp. The familiarity of my home felt foreign, haunted by the memories that I now carry like scars upon my skin. I no longer saw the world behind rose colored glasses. I now saw it for what it is. A cruel dark place, that is cold and unforgiving.

I’m sure you never planned to end up on a farm, where the land was still the way God left it. Wide, wild, and quietly cruel. There were no fences high enough to keep out the ghosts, and no silence deep enough to bury the past. The farm stood stubborn against the wind, weathered and weary, much like myself.

A man who rarely spoke and never smiled. I wasn’t cruel, but I wasn’t kind either. Carrying myself like a man built from war and bone. Someone who’d buried too much and didn’t have the strength to grieve properly.

It was quiet in the house, the kind of quiet that had weight to it. Every creak of the old floorboards was magnified, every shift of the building wood a reminder of how empty this place was.

The couch groaned when I sank into it, my back protesting the long day of physical work. The whiskey bottle called to me from the coffee table, its amber liquid a siren song I was all too willing to listen to. That was how the cycle went. A day of hard labor, then the night to drown in my thoughts. Or try to anyway.

I took a long swallow of whiskey, the burn sliding down my throat and igniting a familiar, not entirely unpleasant, fire in my gut. I should sleep, but sleep rarely came these days. I should eat, but my appetite had long since dulled.

Instead, I sat there, staring at the wall on the opposite side of the room, my mind whirling with unwelcome memories. The echoes of gunfire and screaming men.

Just when I was about to drown myself in another swig, the creaking of the stairs announced your presence. I didn’t need to look to know it was you. Your footsteps had a certain cadence. Soft and quiet, but steady. You didn’t rush anywhere.

“Can’t sleep?” My gravely voice rumbled, breaking my self imposed silence first.

We didn’t marry out of love. It was out of necessity. You needed a place to go, and I needed someone who’d stay. There was no kiss. No vows. I slid a ring onto your finger that didn’t fit quite right. Like an unspoken promise.