On soft and hard things

I am not a great believer in appearances of physical fitness. Looking over summer-time photos, when people wear skimpy clothes and parade their toned bodies, youths thinking that they are super beautiful because they haven't grown bellies and chest hair yet, girls whose hips haven't formed yet, thinking they are pretty... Then I look at the General (and I can, because he's on leave and I get to harass him 24/7, yeehaa :D) and think - even with a winter belly, even with chest hair, even with a lazy smirk on his pouty mouth, he would tear any one of them in half. Come wolves and winter, he would prove himself ten times the physical champion than any of the fitness freaks who have never even seen a woods axe in their lives, yet alone wielded it. I have seen men who look like they are an exhibiton of muscle and they couldn't run, swim or climb if their lives depended on it. I wouldn't expect any of them to carry me out of the fire. Though of course Gods have blessed some men with natural greatness and some people couldn't grow legs the size of the General's even if they lived in fitnesses. And then I press my ear to his massive chest and in it, in the dark wet cave under the hard bone plate thumps a heart like it was a tanker ship's engine pump.