snow on the convent

Snow on the convent. War in the fields.

Sister Maryna prayed. Then programmed. Children would not have to suffer this world of cratered streets, gutted homes, crushed dreams. Sister Maryna understood what needed to be done and coded.

Below the crypts were the vaults. Deep and cold. For seventeen hundred years, her sisterly order had stared doom down and prepared. Plague. Pestilence. Perfidy. The perfect tools to combat aggressors and oppressors.

In the silence and chill of the ancient undercroft, Sister Maryna spoke to no one but the crude stones. To the squat pillars and their burdened arches she confided: persistence, endurance, subterfuge. She persisted, endured, plotted, and the opportunity finally came. From on high.

Winds howling, snow blinding, a military drone tumbled down within the convent’s high walls. Sister Maryna loathed slavery, but she slaved the drone to her code. Sister Maryna feared plague, but she infected the drone with a corrupting virus. In binary battle, she observed ruthless mercy. No instigator of national lies would be spared. No perpetrator of martial violence would escape judgment.

The hijacked drone set free: her code now their code. Soon to spread. Aggressors her target, aggression her path. Maryna prayed for them. Their swift end.

Snow on the convent. Thaw in the fields.