The wind today carries a scent of damp earth, a promise of rain that never quite arrives. One hears of these distant rumblings, these pronouncements from across the water, and one wonders what it all truly means. “Blow up,” he says, and “stop its attacks.” Such definite words, like a child drawing a line in the sand with a stick, believing the ocean will obey.

I imagine the men in their rooms, perhaps with a samovar cooling on a side table, discussing these matters. They speak of gas fields and retaliatory strikes, of nations and borders, as if these were solid, tangible things, like the oak table before them. But beneath the words, I hear the familiar hum of something else entirely. The fear of losing what little one has, the desperate need to assert oneself, to feel important, even if it means shouting into a void.

And the others, those who are told to “stop their attacks,” what do they hear? Do they hear a command, or merely the distant barking of a dog in a neighboring village? Perhaps they nod, and smile, and then return to their own concerns, to the price of grain, to the cough of a child, to the slow, inevitable decay of an old fence post. The world continues, indifferent to the grand pronouncements. The gas will flow, or it will not. The attacks will cease, or they will not. And the rain, I suspect, will still hold off, leaving the earth parched and waiting. It always does.