a sister or half sister; use of weapons;

the little mountain monarchy was always poorly defended by a mostly ceremonial military, and now it had been invaded by its restive neighbour, familiar with territorial skirmishes and civil combat. Over half of the country had been lost already, and now what remained of the military and the rebel militia rallied to make a spirited defense.

I stood next to some picnic tables laden with boxes of donated weapons. I was dressed in office clothes, a light blue shirt and grey trousers, though it was the middle of a war. Word came round that we had to start preparing our defense, the invaders were coming. Everyone rushed off, but I realised I had no weapon, and so looked through the boxes for a suitable one. I chose a hunting rifle over an assault rifle because I figured I wanted to shoot invaders from as far away as possible, but when I removed it from the box I discovered there was only half of it.

Everyone had left by this time and so i ran to join them at the ruined fort or whatever that was the defence. Suddenly i realised how close the invaders were - they were rolling their camouflage trucks into position a few hundred metres to my left as I ran. Uh oh, I thought. And the militia was all lined up to open fire as I ran towards them with my half of a rifle.

They started shooting at me early but I waved and yelled with my arms in the air. Surely they can see that i'm not in uniform and therefore one of them, I thought. The bullets whizzed past.

The office wear must have made them realise I couldn't seriously be a soldier. They waved me to run into the lines. As I got to them I realised many were wearing blue jumpers the same shade as my shirt. Wow that was lucky. Boy do we look hungry too.

A land rover was stopped at the medical orderly tent. It offloaded a hamper basket full of treat-like things wrapped in paper. A bone chair, I thought. The orderlies asked me to take the basket/hamper to the General. I took it.

He looked at it. The deputy looked at it. They unwrapped one candied treat after another. The men were starving and the invading Marshall had sent our General pralines.

After removing several paper wrapped things the hamper became a giant heaped cake. It could have housed a person within. The General looked at it suspiciously. He put his sword through the middle of it. It passed through easily. He sliced it up, passing the pieces to me, and I was holding armfuls of cake, and his deputy was cleaning the cake off his gold sword with the elaborate snapping jaws near the hilt.

Beneath the cake was a circular wooden box the lid of which was in two sections, like a yin-yang sign. two gold keys on either lid kept it locked shut. I thought of the movie se7en, of the novel from iain m. banks, of strategy. The General grasped the twin keys, my arms were full of cake, and I feared for our defense.