Soldier (Story)

:"And even then, Soldier seemed all to be sleeping. [...] The perfect place to live, so perfect that nobody could possibly live here. A neat little ghost town inhabited only by the tidy dead."
Soldier is a short story in the intermission of The Yellow Butterflies. Deviating from the central storyline of the butterflies, it depicts an unnamed narrator investigating mysterious occurrences in a mining town named Soldier, Wales.
A PDF of the current draft can be found here.
The following sections may contain spoilers.
== Plot ==
The unnamed narrator meets Frances on a train and is immediately enamoured. They strike up a conversation and become transfixed by Frances' descriptions of Soldier. Fighting insomnia that night, they resolve to visit Soldier, a mining town apparently 'near Llandudno'.
The Narrator arrives in Soldier at dawn and finds Soldier to be extremely quiet. They see nobody on the streets, and eventually they spot Frances in a window, and meet up with them: Frances takes them inside and begins the tour of Soldier.
During the tour, the narrator notes how bare and quiet Soldier is, likening it to a ghost town. They also note throughout that the sign by the road to Soldier changes throughout the day - when they first see it, it reads Welcome to Soldier, the town that never sleeps!, then Welcome to Soldier, then simply SLEEP, then Welcome to Soldier, the town that never wakes. After being introduced to the two slate heaps, the narrator is overwhelmed and collapses.
A rainstorm starts to pick up, and the narrator is forced to stay in Soldier overnight. The rain eventually picks up to the point where both slate heaps collapse - although they were designed to stem each other's flow and protect the town if one were to collapse, they form a landslide that overwhelms Soldier entirely. The narrator, unable to sleep due to insomnia, realises that the heaps are falling and begins to flee. As they run, they see Frances standing motionless in the street, being consumed by the slate. Finally escaping the flow, the narrator notes that the sign has changed again, to read Welcome to Soldier, the town that never wakes in time.
The next time they take the train, the narrator sees Frances again, and their eyes meet, before Frances gets off the train, disappearing into the sea of people on the station.
== Characters ==
* The Narrator. Remains unnamed throughout the story. Suffers from insomnia.
* Frances. A mysterious, captivating individual. Their true identity and purpose is unknown.
== Trivia ==
* The story's title and premise are allegedly references to an experience of the author's, who mistakenly read the name of a location on a SatNav as 'Milwr' (Soldier) while driving past Llandudno, only for the word to be gone at a second glance.
Category:Written Pieces
Category:Rhiannon H works
Category:Stories in The Yellow Butterflies