Prelude
As a young girl I lived in a meadow village. It was a peaceful place filled with young families and little crime. We thrived there, my mother a teacher, and my father a skilled hunter. I was the youngest, alongside my twin sister, of six children.
We attended school, we played with our friends, we ran through the streets being distributive and reckless. My best friend Percy and I would spend hours outside the village walls, searching through the seas of grass for animal life. I always had a knack for finding animals before Percy, and they always liked me more.
I was happy back then. I was young and free.
But all good things must come to an end.
My memory of the night is blurry, filled with terror and tears. I can’t remember the reason for the chaos, I can’t remember how we escaped it. What I do remember, however, is my brothers, still children themselves, dragging my sister and I far from the village, fleeing some assailant I would not recognize should we cross paths again.
I remember calling for my mother.
I remember waiting, terrified, for what felt like days.
I remember the way my heart leapt when Father came for us, bloodied and bruised.
And I remember the way it broke when he told us we would not see our mother again.
I was eight years old at the time. Ten years have passed since that day, and my life still feels emptier for her absence.
Our lives changed irreversibly that day. We lost our mother, for reasons our Father will not disclose, we lost our home, we lost our lives. Since that day we have lived on our own, a small farm in the middle of the desert. Just my family and I, separate from the world, and blind to the war brewing all around us.
Our old life became a dream, a time we do not discuss, as though it only ever happened in our heads. I believe Father, and even my brothers, found peace in pretending nothing happened before this place, that the world beyond our farm barely existed. I, however, did not. And while my family lives on, happy, I find my heart filled with longing.
But all things must come to an end, and had I known what life beyond the farm held, I probably would have appreciated the secluded life far more.
