[M4F] Run through the jungle [Myths]

Over on the mountain,

Thunder magic spoke.

Let the people know my wisdom,

Fill the land with smoke.

Sweat stings his cuts as he runs through the trees, fronds slapping at his face as bullets snap overhead. Deeper, into the darkness of the jungle, he sprints, the rattle of a broken radio drowned out by the thudding of his hard. Back to the LZ, he thinks, hands dancing over empty magazines while a prayer whispers out into the wet heat. Just let me get back.

Somewhere in the jungle, as 1971 draws to a close, Private Lockwood is lost.

Stone rises overhead, vines crawling up the blocks that haven't seen human hands since the world was young. The gloom deepens, cracked steps crumbling away beneath the lost Marine as a trail of fear and blood drips out behind him. He's entered the temple, but all he knows is desperation and a longing for home, the sick clench in the pit of his stomach and a hammer ringing in his chest.

And there she is, a name long forgotten. Once armies had prayed to her on the eve of battle, had sang songs and gazed at her in the flames, seen her spear in the arc of the sun and her voice in the whistle of arrows. But they'd all left, the prayers growing quieter and the strength faded from her bones until she was... mortal. Or not far from it. Once a goddess astride the temple, and now a prisoner here, locked away as time rolls on beyond her.

Still, the rumble of something and dark shapes blurring overhead, the distant roll of thunder, had given her hope, but still no one had come to pay her due.

And now there he is, the rifle in his arms and the cloth on his skin telling her, like a lover's whisper, that her time, of shield and spear and great deeds done in the sun, have ended long ago. But the look in his eyes is like an prayer, eyes hot and wild, and the set of his shoulders is something she remembers, swimming out of the dreams of the past.

His eyes catch hers, and guns seem to stop their distant wail. They're not that different, after all, a prayer the same in any tongue on his lips and an old-forgotten fire beginning to sing in her heart.

Somewhere in the jungle, Private Lockwood goes to worship.