Change

Perhaps someone should kill me. 

Not this version of me. 

The one from the past. The one who still haunts me. Not my dreams, but my waking hours. Refusing to die. 

He whispers in my ear. Whispers that he is too important to this world. Whispers that he is too important to me. 

He is correct.

Yet I still find myself yearning for a life without him. 

A life without weakness. 

I am lucky that living through pain is a triumph. 

Or else I would have nothing. 

Except the blood of more weaklings washed across my blade. 

Rest In Daemon

How was that version of me born? No. Scratch that. 

Why even ask? 

I remember it like it was my whole life. Like it were every memory I ever had. 

I could relive it every day from now, and my memory wouldn't get any clearer. 

I know that, because I already do. 

That day is my home. It's where I live. Where my mind is dragged back to in the quiet. 

The day my family was taken from me.

I remember waking up. Not fully. Knowing the sunlight would do the rest.

Lying on my elbow, I stared at the wall, at the cuts and nicks etched in it. A few thousand. I counted them in my boredom, and I was often bored. I peered at the golden slices of sunlight streaked across it, my que to look out the window. 

Yet as potent as my memory is, I don't know why I bothered. Every morning bore the same sight.

Golden-green grass and brown huts of oak and hay. Herders handling their cattle. Farmers tilling the field atop the hill. Housewives hanging laundry on clotheslines and lining up to draw water from the well. Humming a song, if they were in the mood. 

The younger children racing and running. Playing football with a balled up chunk of stitched cloth. As goals, two crooked branches from the forest floor that Uncle Bulso had jammed into the dirt for them. 

I should've felt satisfied. Comfortable, safe. And yet I had seen this same sight each morning for so long that I only longed for it to change in the next. A quaint little problem, is it not?

The warm breeze rolled over me as I left the bedroom. Stroking the thin hairs upon my arms. Beckoning me outside. They had started the day without me, and I did not particularly care. 

'I'll just take a leak and go out to the fields.' I tell myself.

Although, I can't imagine how uncomfortable the other farmers felt working alongside a fourteen year old. 

Sometime later I stepped outside. My brothers were holding a little football tournament that day. 

They shot me a glance or two, but gave no invite. I had turned them down too many times. Asking now would merely be sprinkling water into an ocean. Instead I walked past them and they didn't bat an eyelid. It felt easier that way. 

On I went to the fields, trudging past the village well. Hoe in hand. My head in the clouds. 

In my absent-mindedness, I didn't even notice myself walking past my mother. 

"Oh, Sune! Can you come here for a second?"

'Shit, what does she want?'

Hanging my head in defeat, I turned and trudged back to her. 

"What, ma?" I sighed. 

"Slept in again. You okay?"

The fog of annoyance dissipates. 

'She's just checking up on me.' 

"Yeah, I'm fine." I replied, swivelling my head anywhere but her face. 

"I mean, honestly. At your age? You should be bursting out of bed at the crack of dawn."

"Ma, I'm--"

"And that farming of yours." She nodded at the hoe in my hand. "How many times do I have to tell you? We have plenty of grown-ups to do it. Enjoy life while you're young. Or you'll be wishing you had when you're old."

I had heard these words too often, and ignored them too many times. 

'What if I don't wish to do anything? What do I do then?'

I had already found my answer long ago. 

'I make myself useful.' 

"Please, think about that, okay?" Mom said. 

My focus jolted back to the present.

"...Yeah."

Mom sighed. She knew I wouldn't. Yet she had no idea why. For I didn't have it in me to explain. 

With that, I turned and headed up the hill toward the field. 

And spacing out completely, I got to work.

***

'What's that noise?'

A faint whistling in the air. At first I brushed it off as a fly buzzing by my ear. Before long it grew louder. I could hear it in motion. Fast. Sharp. Not a whistle, more of a glide. 

A few more seconds, and I could trace the direction. Straight ahead, above us. 

Sunlight in my way, I squinted afar. Hand on my brow. Faint specks of shapes moving. The noise grew louder. Cutting and swirling. No one else had taken notice. 

A few more seconds, and I could see them. 

Figures atop birds. Black birds. Unnaturally large. Wide enough for a person to stand atop them. The figures riding them shone in the sun-rays. Glistening, as if they were made of metal. 

'Metal? Didn't the elders say...?'

All thought ceased. My hoe clattered to the grass. 

Only a couple more seconds, and I was yelling. 

"HUMANS!" I roared. "HUMANS INCOMING!"

The orderly hustle of the village came to a grinding halt. Heads twisted in all directions. They traced me. My gaze. The sight I could not peel my eyes from. They saw it too. 

Chaos erupted. 

Screams of terror. Parents order their kids inside. Farmers flee the scene, tripping and tumbling, crying in fear. 

Rusty nails and floorboards being boarded to windows with shaking hands. 

The fathers unsheathe their swords for the first time in years with no intention to use them. What was the point? 

They just wanted to feel in control, but the humans were the ones with control. 

The whole village in motion, and yet I was frozen. I could not wrench my gaze from them. I could not unstick my legs.

The sight of them entangled my mind. Something new. Something I had never once seen before. I had been used to quiet melancholy. Even fear was new to me.

"Sune! Get inside, now!" Mom cried at my back.

Trance broken. Death approaching me. 

Gasping, I turned and bolted back through the field. Diving back inside. Rolling at my brother's feet. Mother slammed the door behind me, hammering a barricade into it. She could scarcely hit the nails. 

"What's going on...!?" My youngest brother Mickey asked.

"Shh!" Mother hissed. Mickey flinched, eyes wavering. Mother had always coddled him. But now it was different. The world you build around your child to ease them into reality, it would soon come crashing down, far too early. I made no effort to comfort him. I was too focused on peering through the cracks in the window. 

The blackbirds had already landed. A real glimpse at the humans. Their garments gleamed in the sun. Metal after all. Yet what struck me was their skin. None of it was green. Rather, it was a range of beige and brown. A few patches of red. And more than few scars. Their make of their hair was just the same as ours, yet their eyes sparkled. Shimmering with something beyond my comprehension. 

I had been warned endlessly of humans. How much they despised us. But stories are stories. So from that window all I could see was yet another story unfolding. It felt like a dream, so I waited for it to end. Soaking in every moment. 

In my pre-occupation, I noticed one human that stood out. 

Dark-skinned. Older. His armour more luxurious than the last. Black with a sharp silver embroidery, a pattern that split like lightning across his chest. A long purple cape, billowing in the wind. His greying hair flowing past a face untouched by scars, nothing like the others. And his eyes. Full of something. More than the others. I could not make out what. 

'He must be the leader.'

From a distance, he was somewhat admirable. Then he opened his mouth.

"Come out at once, gremlins! Reveal your moss-faces! Show yourselves!" he spat. Erratic fury, and a drop of deranged excitement. 

"I'll tell you this! The longer you wait, the more you'll wish I had already killed you!"

No one made a move. Nor a sound. He span, checking for movement. He gritted his teeth when he couldn't find it. 

"Fine! Let's make a bargain. We only want the children. You men can keep your dirty lives, your dirty gremlin whores."

Mother whimpered. 

I had once believed I had everything figured out. I knew how to reason away my mother's lectures. How to skilfully skirt my brothers' attention. How to be alone and remind myself it was better. I knew all that would happen before it did, for it would simply be what had happened yesterday. I lived life as if I had rehearsed. I knew what I thought of everyone I knew. What made them the way they are. I had it all figured out. 

But in all my false understanding of life, I had never known hatred like this. 

"This fairy-tale of yours ends today. You can't hide from your duty forever."

'What the hell is wrong with this man?'