Beneath a Dire Moon

The moon hovers there, shining aloft, its form the infamous crescent, its glow so luminous as to reveal the rest of the orb, oft-hidden when its time in the sky is not nigh. Underneath, a fog coats the cold ground. It floats eerily around everything in its path, twisting here and there, suffusing the darkened morning with a fell feel, secrets behind every bush and tree. As my fellows and I trudge past a field to our left, the mist reveals the obstacles we placed there afore; in the sun, just part of training, procedure - in these cruel environs, an ominous vision. Barbed wire raises from a fence line like the hackles of an angry beast; threatening even we who emplaced it with its edges, taunting our easily pierced flesh to embrace it. Bunkers hunker down by the edge of the wood, barely glimpsed openings once promising solace - in this haunting setting they appear more as gaping maws, showing to the world only a presence and visage of hunger. Meant to hamper the enemy, defend those who built them, on this macabre morn they serve more to menace their own. Our bristling band hurries to pass that brooding breadth, the horned moon vanishing at last from our unsettled sight.