Monody

1- Monody

"Keep your eyes on the horizon!" I yelled to my youngest sister, Grace. As much as she doesn't listen, there's always the occasion she actually does.

"Yeah, okay! Now what?" She asks me. She isn't even looking at the horizon now.

"Well, you'd know if you were looking." I replied smugly.

Four years the war has been going on. The MCAAs, or Mutant Creatures always attacking, have been trying to overthrow Grace, my brother-in-law-to-be Tigerdust, my sister Titania, and my own parents. They must be really stupid to think they can win though. Because so far they've been pretty bad.

"Another wave." Grace mutters annoyed. Finally, she's looked at the horizon.

She takes the cannon and prepares to fire. "Wait." I say. I run down the hill so the blast won't be too loud for my ears. Sounds can sound much louder to me then anyone else.

I give her the thumbs up, and she fires, then yells, "I got them!

We both jump towards each other and do a victory dance we made up together. "Oh yeah!" Grace cheers.

I'm proud of her, it's the first time she actually killed a whole wave of MCAAs.

I'm interrupted with our dance when Camai walks over the hill toward us. Camai is..well, my best friend that's a guy...for sure... and maybe something more...he's got chocolate brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. His skin is so pale it looks shiny. He's as thin as me, and not muscly, like me, but he's about six inches taller than me.

"Hey Monody." He says. "Hey Grace." he nods in her direction. He whispers in my ear, "Private training, three."

"Grace I gotta go, I'll teach ya more stuff later." I say to her. She nods and sits in the grass. I follow Camai down the hill. Sometimes life is great.

But other times its ripped from you. That's how it was for Bronze. He was our Military leader, and Camai, my other friend and I watched him die. It was expected though. We all knew it would happen, him being a two-hundred-fifty year old Military leader, when most of us in Terraneania die at age two-hundred-seventy.

I remember the day he died. Grace was only about five years old, meaning I was nine. Camai must have been too, and my friend who was there was definitely nine, if not eight.

He was shot in the stomach with some sort of poison from a MCAA and wounded. We ran to him, and it was then which he said the most inspiration words anyone had ever said to me.

"Monody, do you know what a monody is?" He asked me. I shook my head. But then I nodded.

"Is a monody a song?" I asked.

"Sort of. A monody is like a love poem, but when one of the lovers is dead." He told me. The poison was turning his skin green, but I had seen far worse for a nine year old.

I remember then that I am a warrior, not a child.

"I was around 14, and I had a girlfriend." Bronze told me. "And she died. Those were dark times, Monody. People dying left and right." He looked strange, nearly entirely green. "And so I wrote my own Monody."

"Why are you telling me this? Bronze, we need to help you!" I said.

"It is my time." He said. I knew what he meant. He was letting himself die. He probably hoped in an afterlife he could meet his loved one. "But I want you to hear my song. I just want to see if you like it. Or perhaps you may need it."

Somewhere in the hills,
those hazy days I do remember.
We were running still.
Had the whole world at our feet.