Sentinels
by Scot Noel

Two of the followers took up positions near his boots.  The others waited where his right hand had been.  They waited with the patience of toys, waited with mixed understanding.  They waited near the body while all about them the air trembled with light and the earth sounded to the voice of the deepest drums.

By nightfall the pounding subsided, followed for a time by silence.  It became so still they could hear the passing of the river to the east.  And still they waited.  Above them rode a darkness unbroken by stars.  The hours passed. 
At dawn there came a half-twilight, followed by a hard rain.

Without saying a word, for they could say no words, the five sentinels began to move.  The smallest of them stood at five and a half centimeters, the largest –the lithe female—at six.  When grasses bowed and trees swayed, they required shelter.  The four looked to the female, who gestured with a splayed hand, urging them back to the belt pouch from which they had emerged sometime past.

The climb across the body, though difficult, was accomplished with practiced ease.   As practiced were the moves by which they entered the small, stiff pouch and pulled its cover tight, closing themselves in the little darkness.
  
The rain sounded as hard against the tiny shelter as the artillery had, burning up the sky.  But inside, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, they knew they could not be separated, not washed away by the pounding torrents.  Inside, at their feet, laid a small capsule of long-dried seeds, a singular possession given over to their trust.  A promise.  Beside it rested an intricately folded device of a size easily carried by two of the sentinels.  It collected sunlight, and would need to do so again, soon.

In the meantime, the rain washed the battlefield, and the rivers ran red.

Memory, always at a premium in forms so small, came in the way of dreams.  Waking dreams, reflections of moments from the time they first looked out upon the world.  Long ago, a company of their kind had stood for review on a mirrored table.  Great blue eyes reflected up from beneath their feet, and a thumb, as large as the largest of the sentinels, came together with its fellows, gentling them up into digits barely a decade old.  In young hands, they found themselves examined and possessed.

They were gifts, holiday playthings, little figures smarter than they need be, but were.  They had become the army of Daniel, and there were things to do.  They fought one another across expanses of open floor and mounted difficult campaigns in the freshly tilled soil of the gardens.  They explored beneath flowers whose heights rivaled the canopies of rain forests and faced down demons, fighting back creatures of many legs and hard shells.  They broke through webs into dark places.  Atop Daniel’s shoulders, they learned to watch the stars.

And they died.  Or dwindled.  Their numbers faded as the memories of dreams fade.  Some were lost beneath snows, others swept up by small streams.  Fire stole away a few, and the teeth of great beasts tore at others. 

So it was that in the end they understood the passing of Daniel. 

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