That’s what they called it.
A sin.

We were the peasant class and were expected to stay that way.
People fought against the Attilians...and lost.

Their soldiers shot anything that moves or made a single sound without a single regret.

I can’t blame them, either. We started a war with them, and have lost every battle so far.
We can’t win against the entire Force.

Mother grips my hand in a vise like grip, as if I’ll float away if she doesn’t. Haz walks to my right with his eyes forward, scanning the area. He always does that. He’s always on the lookout for any sign of danger or the Attilians.

The dirt road that leads to the village center is littered with waste; all forms, even human. The elderly are aided by the young, seven or eight years or so. Babies are swaddled in rags tied to their mother’s busts.

Trains of children hold hands and sing songs as if they’ve no care in the world. I’ve always wondered why. How can they be so happy in a place like this? A place where death creeps around every corner and lurks in every shadow. Death is in the saturated sunrises that call us to work every morning, and the inky skies that call us to sleep every night.

“You should be more like them, Feya. Be a child, be happy.” Mother says sternly as she kisses my left temple and plays with my hair as I lay across her chest in the black of the night.

“What does it mean to be happy, mother?” I ask her, looking up at her when I do.

She doesn’t respond, but instead shushes me and tell me to go to sleep instead.

Children are important, I guess.

They are needed during repent.

Each family puts together a basket, or something to the liking of. They fill it with their harvests and deliver it to the village center for the Force.

It’s our way of saying sorry without actually ever saying it.

The children take the baskets up the an alter and place it at the foot of a soldier.

That’s exactly what I do.

I watch the other children scramble up to the metal men with gleams in their dark eyes and smiles on their faces, as if they’re truly pleased to be here.

“Go on,” Haz ushers me forward with a nudge and a stern glance in the direction of the soldiers.

I take the basket from Mother and take a step toward the decaying cement alter.

I’m feeling something, something I would call fear.

It sets in the pit of my empty stomach and grows loud and proudly at me.

I see it now.
The children aren’t happy, they’re afraid of being sad.

Notes

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