Renata had learned to tell the time by the colour of the dust.

Morning dust was pale, almost shy—lifting off the ground in thin veils as the sun crawled up over the Hesco barriers. By noon it thickened into something heavier, a burnt‑orange haze that clung to her eyelashes and made the world feel like it was rusting in slow motion. Evening dust was the worst: purple‑brown, metallic, settling into the creases of her uniform like it meant to stay.

She was nineteen, and she felt every one of those colours in her bones.

Most days she sat on an overturned crate outside the comms tent, boots planted wide, helmet pushed back just enough to let her scalp breathe. She looked like she was resting. She wasn’t. Renata never really rested anymore; she only paused.

The others called her “Ren,” a nickname she pretended to hate but secretly clung to. It reminded her she was still someone with a past, not just a rank stitched onto fabric.

Today, she was waiting for the patrol roster. Waiting had become its own kind of duty—quiet, tense, a space where thoughts crept in whether she wanted them or not. She rubbed her thumb along the edge of her dog tags. They were warm from the heat. Everything was warm here, even the things that shouldn’t be.

A shadow fell across her boots.

“You’re up for the afternoon run,” Staff Sergeant Morales said, handing her the clipboard. “Route Copper. You good?”

Renata nodded before she even looked at the map. It was easier than explaining the truth—that “good” had become a word she didn’t recognise anymore.

Morales studied her for a moment, the way people do when they’re trying to decide if you’re holding together or just pretending convincingly. Renata kept her face still. She’d learned that early: stillness was armour.

“You’ll have Patel with you,” Morales added.

When Morales walked away, she let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. She folded the map, slid it into her pocket, and stood. Her knees cracked—too loudly for someone her age.

Inside the tent, Patel was checking the radio equipment. He looked up and grinned, the kind of grin that tried to make the world less sharp.

“Ready to babysit me again, Ren?”

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “Just don’t break anything this time.”

He didn’t know that she replayed every patrol in her head at night, cataloguing each moment she could have done something differently. He didn’t know that she woke up sometimes with her heart racing so fast she thought it might outrun her body. She didn’t tell him. She didn’t tell anyone.

Out there, she was the calm one. The reliable one. The one who didn’t flinch.

But as she slung her rifle over her shoulder and stepped into the heat, she felt that familiar tightening in her chest—the quiet fear that lived beneath her ribs like a second heartbeat.

She didn’t want to be afraid. She wanted to be nineteen. She wanted to be home, where dust was just dirt and not a warning.

Patel nudged her as they walked toward the Humvee. “Hey. You okay?”

Renata hesitated. Just for a second. Just long enough for him to notice.

Then she nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

And she climbed in, because that was what she did. She moved forward. She kept going. Even when the dust changed colour. Even when the world felt too heavy for her shoulders.

Even when she wasn’t sure who she was becoming.