Loving Pride

His Father's Blood

In the darkness, a soldier emerged. He had somehow escaped to the backyard, which had an empty chicken coop.

To Lydia's utter horror, Thomas sneezed.

The soldier raised his gun. In hopes of misleading him, Lydia moved, and he noticed. Slowly, he came behind the coop with his gun raised.

"Who are you?"

The soldier, who was clearly shaking, his eyes bloodshot, and half his face splattered with blood, seemed deadly with a loaded sniper aimed directly at Lydia.

"M-my name is-"

"I'm not asking your fucking name!" He spat.

"Are you with the Reds or the Blacks?"

In the mere seconds that she had known the soldier, Lydia had already raised her hands in surrender. She was trembling as much as him, but her fear wasn't selfish. Thomas was inches away from her, and one misstep on the soldier's part could end her little boy's life.

"The son that we'll have... protect him. Keep him away from the bullshit of this world. Teach him to live like a man, not a soldier. Give him my love."

The words that Colonel Marquez had said stuck to her soul. Tears rolled down her face at the thought of them.

"Red or Black?"

The soldier repeated, taking a step forward. The tip of his sniper pressed into her neck.

In the brief moments of logic that surged through her head, she was relieved to notice his uniform. He fought for the Black Unity.

"B-black" She gulped.

The soldier's eyes turned wild.

"You Black scum! I switched uniforms to save myself! My wife, my kids, my fucking family died because-"

Blood splattered on Lydia's face and Thomas's hand which had reached out of the coop to stab the soldier in the neck with the shaving knife that his mother had handed him for safekeeping.

Lydia was dumbstruck, but she made a bold move to pull Thomas's hand away from the man. The soldier pulled the trigger. Lydia had leaned as far into the coop as possible to hug Thomas, causing the soldier to miss before collapsing on the dirt.

"I'm scared, Mommy," the little boy sniffed. "I'm scared that these soldiers are going to hurt you. Are you okay? Why are you crying? Don't cry, Mommy. I'll protect you."

Lydia cried even more. She couldn't fathom the thought of her six-year-old stabbing a man to death—an enemy at that. She couldn't believe that he was, unknowingly, everything like his father. The weight of the murder he committed haunted her, and it would continue to haunt her until the day she died.

Lydia hugged Thomas and sobbed into his shoulder for a long while. They stayed in each other's arms, tainted with an enemy's blood, for hours. Neither Thomas nor Lydia wanted to move away. Her soul was relieved that the little boy was safe, despite the murder he committed.

The gunshots and screams began dying down until they heard trumpets and a megaphone.

Lydia had to know what was going on. The young mother braved herself from the backyard to the front. The Black Unity's soldiers were lined along the pavement on both sides of the main street. A few soldiers in the center were assaulting all ears with their bugles while three men remained on horses, one of them being Colonel Marquez Agaria.

The surviving families, the normal citizens who had nothing to do with being Red or Black, cautiously stepped out of their homes and collected in groups. Even Lydia stood near them.