BIRD CRY ECHOES through the valleys, sharp and distant and mournful, like a parent calling for a lost child, and the black shadows of great wheeling shapes, wings outspread, circle the verdant slopes of the lowlands. A wind ruffles through the landscape, long grass dipping with the same tremulous undulation as the rhythmic pulse of a sea tide, and he stands with his face to the breeze, allowing himself to be buffeted by it. His skin is pocked with grit, his eyes watering from the flecks of dirt blown into them, yet he refuses to turn away. He feels like he's composed of shifting sand, subject to the whims of the elements; or maybe one of the skeletal trees perched upon the outcroppings, clinging tenaciously to life as it's stripped and scoured by an unstoppable eroding force. The chill in the air numbs his ears, dries his lips, and causes his nose to run - he wipes it on his sleeve - but the sky is the colour of sapphire and nothing can diminish the unblemished beauty of the vast canopy above him. It is a glorious spring morning, one in which the blood rushes a little faster and the hair tingles in syncopation with the new season budding around it.

He likes to take at least one moment a day to appreciate the country in this way, which has otherwise been disfigured by conflict. It serves as a reminder that time and nature will prevail, despite his species' best interests; that the planet keeps turning, that the sun continues to bestow its nourishing rays upon the surface, teasing seed into bloom, oblivious to the rampant designs of his kind. This land has seen enough hate wrought upon it to deface it permanently, the scars running deep below root and rock to leave it irrevocably changed, yet it refuses to be battered into ugliness: it continues, unbowed, to exist while all around it death tries to spread its taint.

It's a small moment of marvel, and one that he never grows tired of experiencing. He flicks the last of his ash off the end of his cigarette, and drops the butt into the mud, grinding it out with his heel. Breathing in that fresh-dew smell, swelling his chest with cool mountain air, he reaches for his shovel and hums as he begins to dig, dark soil turning beneath his blade. For two long hours he toils, producing a pit several feet square, work so professionally accomplished that he barely gives it a second glance, rarely stops to consider its size; he knows from instinct that its dimensions are correct. He's dug many more like it, and the procedure has the touch of routine about it, his labour accompanied constantly by quiet and tuneless melodies, as if he's unaware he's even making a sound. His movements are swift and unhampered by doubt, aware that he cannot afford to linger too long; this will not be the only hole he will have to dig before the day is done.

Hoisting himself out of the pit, he tosses the spade aside and grabs the nearest of the bodies by the legs, dragging it towards its makeshift grave. All the corpses have been wrapped in linen and tightly bound, and he is relieved that at least he does not have to look them in the face when he showers the dirt down upon them; but even so he can tell by the size and weight of this cadaver that it was a child, no more than a teenager. It is not the first he has buried, but that doesn't make it easier, to feel its lightness as he hefts it in his arms for a moment before allowing it to tumble into the ground. He hopes that the bodies that will be following it are the child's family - it makes little sense in the scheme of things, but provides some crumb of comfort that they will have each other's company beneath the soil - yet there is no way for sure of knowing. There are too many dead requiring his attention, and the niceties of a civilised grave have been foregone in the interests of speed and sheer quantity. Entire villages have been decimated, carcasses line the roads, and he has been charged with their disposal. So he retrieves the next and the one after that, filling his pit with these human-shaped parcels, humming in that cracked voice, stopping to pile the dirt back in once it is full before starting to dig again. He coughs, sniffs, wipes back tears, and continues, knowing he has no time to dawdle; and knowing too that this job will never be finished, not by him nor his successors. It is an insurmountable task, and yet one that he has accepted and one he will endeavour to complete while there is still breath left in his lungs.

The birds cry to one another as they skate low across the windswept hills, their shadows playing on the heaped mound of bodies that extends around the base of the valley: there are thousands of them, with no markers to distinguish each swaddled corpse from its neighbour. The dead congregate patiently as they await their return to the quiet earth, now gratefully far from the words of their roaring.