prose

"The Tides Will Turn For Those Who Seek Glory"

An unsparing wind swept across the barren beach, the pale yellow sand pounded by waves droned on in a rhythm of defeat. Bernadette wandered along this beach, her eyes fixed on the gray, infinite horizon, yet seeing nothing—no boat to take her away, no lighthouse to give her hope, no sunset to promise her another tomorrow. Her exile was complete, more severe than any imprisonment, for it was imposed by life itself, and its warden was her own soul.

Behind her lay her hometown, and with it, a life she’d left behind that still clung to her with memories from the past. That day’s bitter confrontation with her family weighed heavily on her as she remembered her father’s sneering dismissal, a chubby cigar twitching in his mouth. "The town’s talking, Bernadette," he’d said, echoing the words of Guadalupe, the head nurse at the interim war hospital. Guadalupe had accused her of “wasting time” with idle chatter among the soldiers—men she sought out to learn about what they’d witnessed and to understand the Spanish strategies they had observed firsthand. When she tried to explain herself, he scoffed. “Fight for what?” he laughed. “A revolution? Foolishness. Better you serve the church than waste your life.”

Her brothers’ taunts had cut even deeper. “People like us deserve this, don’t you see? We are quite uncivilized according to the Spaniards,” one sneered, and the other, more resigned, added, “The world won’t change for you, and you’ll only die like a martyr with no one to mourn.” Standing in the doorway, Bernadette saw in their mocking faces a pack of defeated animals, aware of their own helplessness. Turning on her heel, she left with no intent to return.

Now, as Bernadette walked along the desolate shore, isolation pressed down on her like an invisible shroud, until it seemed she was floating alone in a vast, indifferent universe. The unending beach felt like her prison—purgatory between life and death. Yet, strangely, this desolate place became her sanctuary, where solitude transformed her loneliness into a quiet acceptance. Here, in the cold embrace of the sea, Bernadette saw herself clearly.

The person she once was—tied to family, suppressed—was gone. Her future held no promises, but it offered something else: freedom. She thought of the soldiers she had secretly questioned, the men who saw only a polite woman, yet she was prying for details under the guise of idle chatter. They had handed her scraps of knowledge she might turn into weapons—knowledge of the enemy, and of how she could join the ranks without detection. In this desolate place, the idea felt bold, dangerous, and inevitable. She would fight, not as Bernadette, but as someone new, someone who would be neither recognized nor condemned.

Taking a steady breath, Bernadette embraced her exile—not as punishment, but as her path forward. Her transformation was complete, not into the life she had imagined, but into one she had forged from the bleakness of the shore, the wind, and the endless horizon ahead. She was reborn, armed not only with quiet resilience but with purpose—an unyielding resolve to disguise herself, to join the fight that her family had dismissed, and to seek the freedom they believed to be impossible.