Chapter 7 - Prepared
The rest of the morning did not get easier. That was another lesson. Overcoming one obstacle did not cancel the next. Ethan still had walls to climb, logs to carry, gear to clean, and instructors who seemed personally offended by the existence of dry socks.
But something had shifted.
Not in the course.
In him.
The trench had not made him fearless. It had made him informed. Now he knew what his mind sounded like when it begged. He knew what his body felt like when it wanted to stop. He knew the difference between being unable to continue and simply not wanting to.
That difference was small.
It was everything.
Later, after chow, Ethan sat on an overturned crate behind the barracks and scraped mud from his boots with a dull stick. Lawson sat beside him, silent for almost a minute.
Then he said, “I thought you were done in there.”
Ethan kept scraping. “So did I.”
“What changed?”
Ethan looked toward the training course. From a distance, the trench did not look like much. Just dirt, wire, water, and shadow.
“I stopped waiting to feel ready,” he said.
Lawson nodded slowly.
That was the thing nobody told you clearly enough.
The Nation would not call on easy days only. It would not wait until you were rested, confident, comfortable, or unafraid. The call would come when the mud was cold, the wire was low, and the rifle was slipping from your hands.
May you like
Training did not promise to make those moments gentle.
It promised you would know how to move.
