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190

e world was so clear now, the grey light so pure, the domain so utterly hers, there was no chance she'd be hit by a bullet.

She leapt a trench and skirted a trench, leapt and skirted, heading further and further toward the lines. She nearly tripped over a sentry gun, then leapt *on top of it* as it tried to swivel around to get her in its sights, and she pasted an eye on it and laughed and leapt away.

She was thinking that she should get back into a trench and was trying to pick one when it was decided for her -- she was in mid-leap over a trench when a bullet clipped the heel of her shoe and she tumbled down into the trench. She did a tremendous, jarring face-plant into the planks below and lay stunned for a moment with her mouth filling up with blood. Her tongue throbbed -- it had been bitten -- and as she carefully rolled it around her mouth, she discovered that she'd knocked out one of her front teeth. Not such a pretty girl anymore, but she'd be dead in less than five days.

She got to her knees again and planted an eye as she looked around.

A soldier was staring at her from the end of her current trench. He was saying something, but here the trenches boomed with artillery and zizzed with gunfire and hearing was impossible. She drew closer to him to hear what he had to say and she was practically upon him when she realized that he was wearing an enemy uniform.

She was quick quick, but he was quicker and he had her arm in an iron grip before she could pull away.

He said something in a language that they often spoke in the movies, back where there was a cine across from her block of flats. She knew a few words of that language.

"Friend!" she said.

He said something in a different language, but she didn't recognize that one. Then he switched to Hindi, but all she knew to say in Hindi was Love Love Love I'm in Love, which was the chorus to all the songs in the Hindi movies.

He shook her arm hard. He was angry with her, and his gun was in his other han

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