Imagining Reality

I am on a battlefield, dusty and dirty and tired.  My scant armor is covered with a thin sheen of dirt and my eyes feel like I haven't rested in weeks.  Here and there on my clothing are bloodstains, dried to a crusty brown color, some of the wounds beneath them scabbed over and healing while others are still open to the noxious fumes of the battle.  I appear to be alone, dirty lukewarm fog drifting in small clouds around me, obscuring vision beyond a few yards.  Further away I hear shouts and clashes, but only my own heavy breathing echos in my own ears.  My sword arm aches with the effort of holding my weapon in a ready stance, and my other arm has given up under the relentless barrage of enemy fire (which mercifully seems to have given up for a moment) and has rested my circular buckler on the ground.  The enemies' attacks had slowed and stopped as the noxious fog rolled in, and now the tepid humidity in the air is making me cough and splutter, my eyes watering at the smell and feel of the fog.  My head becomes dizzy, and the sounds of my companions fighting their own enemies grow dim and fade away, sounding muffled and unreal.  It is now that I realize the fog is an attack of its own, but I cannot seem to muster up the energy to raise my shield, though how it could protect me I do not know.  I make an ineffective sweep of my sword around my head, but the mist continues to swirl closer.  I realize that the fog is full of whispers, so quiet and persistent that I cannot make them out individually, but which come together to make my head pound and my ears ache.  My heart has sunk in my chest, and my mind begins to make sense of the words it hears in the mist.

"You are alone. No one is here for you. Where has your brilliant general gone?"  They taunt me.
"The plan has failed. You are a failure. Why send out a green little girl like you to do a man's job?" On and on.
"You are worthless, less than worthless. You cause more damage to your own army than the enemy. No one will ever come to your aid." Still they come.
"You are cannon fodder, too unimportant even to deploy in a strategic spot. Not trusted, not worthy of trust.  Utterly useless"  I have sunk down to my knees under the barrage, my head in my hands, sword on the ground, trying to shut the whispers out.
"Utterly forgotten.  Utterly forsaken. Utterly alone."  With this the words fade away, leaving me in the deafening silence of the dirty fog which completely swallows up any noise. Utterly desolate.

As I huddle there a whisper in my heart urges me to call out to my companions in arms, saying that they will hear and come to my defense, but the voices in the fog have silenced me, my tongue lying mute in my mouth from fear. They will not come. They are surrounded by their own battles and fogs and noxious whispers. They will not know how to fight for me and even if they did, I am not worth fighting for, I am not worth defending, I am totally alone.

******

This is me.  This has been the last two weeks.  This is how I've been, relentlessly hammered down by an invisible force that keeps changing tactics until I have very little heart left and stand mute and fearful.

Will you stand with me, with us?  Will you fight side by side with me?  Will you ask me how I am and really mean it?  Will you pray fiercely for me?  Will you be willing to speak on my behalf, to risk much for me, and for your other brothers and sisters?  Will you?