Thunderous Applause

"Fire away."

They unleashed the nightmare and coloured the sky in infinite black lines. The twangs were loud and clapped by the ears of the archers, deafening all around them into a void where nothing existed other than the thunderous applause.

"Load!"

The shout came again, snapping the world back into vision. They did as ordered, machines moving soundlessly towards their goal, hand to quiver, pulling out a long, empty and lost thing, and loaded it onto their weapons.

"Aim!"

On the beat, they raised up their bows in one large movement, the simultaneous step sounding like a thunderclap and the arrows pointing up to the sky like a sea of dark thorns. Their black clothes billowed endlessly in the wind, endlessly holding in formation, stretching their arms and writhing their muscles in pain, not looking around, not seeing any other way.

"Fire away."

And they released and the arrows flew anew, blackening the sky in an instant shorter than the breath they all took when they mustered their bow once again. The sounds they all heard were gone, all taken over by the one feeling they all shared. The collapse of the thunderous applause, the thousands of hands that went together to praise only them.

"Load!"

The applause evaporated, the next movement taking over as the gear and handle pulled the arrow from the quiver. The piece of wood set efficiently on the string without remorse, barely a twitch was seen in the movement.

"Aim!"

Plain, torn, coarse, sharp, the arrows were all raised to the moon and sun above them. They all felt the strain, the power that the bows and strings demanded of them, the sun beating down on their skin, the wind crashing on their shoulders in storms.

"Fire away."

Release. Gasps of wonder and remarks of never-ending relief, they all collapsed and listened once again to the one sound they all wanted to hear, there in their one place of feeling alive, there in their one place of knowing what was good in the world. Rising again, preparing them for the next heave and pull, sowing the vigor just to get them through the imminent struggle, was the sound of thunderous applause.