The Upward Soldier

More about The Upward Soldier

They called him Sky—not his real name, but the one that stuck to him the way dust clings to a soldier’s boots. It started as a joke: he was always tilting his head back, studying the weather, tracking the wind, squinting at the drifting clouds as if they were carrying encrypted messages only he could read.

On the day this moment was captured, the city was a corridor of stone and echo. The war machines still lined the avenues, their engines ticking as they cooled, and soldiers wandered like people emerging from a long underground tunnel. But Sky walked with a different rhythm—lighter, almost incredulous—like someone rediscovering gravity.

He had earned respect not by shouting or posturing, but by an odd, steady calm that settled around him even in chaos. During the worst nights, when the sky roared with engines and fire, he’d keep the younger men steady just by saying, “Look up. It won’t stay like this forever.” No one believed him at the time. But they remembered the words.

This morning, another soldier nudged him.
“Why’re you smiling, Sky? Streets still look like hell.”

Sky glanced upward. The clouds above the city moved unhurried, pale and clean. No smoke streaks. No dark silhouettes crossing overhead. Just a quiet ceiling of weather returning to itself.

He replied, simple as anything:
“Because the sky finally belongs to us again.”

The younger soldier looked up too, and for a moment the rubble didn’t matter. The noise didn’t matter. The ache of memory didn’t matter. Above them was something untouched, something ordinary, something miraculous in its ordinariness.

Years later, long after he’d left the uniform behind, people still remembered that about him:
that when others watched the ground for danger, he watched the sky for hope.