Inherently Innocent

By The War That Starts Today

There grew a small plant in the distance, in a certain hill with a forest that housed the walking souls of lonely spirits and hungry soldiers. The sprout was the youngest of them all and had come generations after the others. No ishine would weep for it. All life leads to death, and all death leads to life. It was just the sprout's time to live, and Dera's time to die.

Aloe walked over the grass nearby, hiding behind a fallen tree. It couldn't have fallen naturally. Its branches were cut, and its base was straight. They looked to the side of it, seeing the small leaves that peeped through a dark mound. They sighed. It would happen eventually. They couldn't all make it. Aloe just hoped Juniper would be safe, but considering their girlfriend's name, of course, she would be. Still, if an ishine had been killed right there, they couldn't be so sure about their own safety. There came the smell of faint smoke every once in a while, as if several hearths were ignited and killed repeatedly. They backed away to the base of the hill, where a certain tall and dark-skinned ishine stood, surrounded by others. They wore clothes, even armour, Aloe could see. So, they were there.

Thyme looked at his friends sleep. There was no wind that day, but still, he had had to raise a stone wall to protect them from the burning day. Golshan would probably have no problem, but Liliac was far too pale. Thyme smiled and looked at the horizon. There was still smoke coming from the settlement's direction, but it would all be alright. He trusted his mother would do the right thing. What was the future they should expect to get? Thyme felt the grass under his palms. He'd grow a garden, and cook for his friends and anyone that needed it. Maybe he'd go near the mountains, or visit the world. There would be so many options.

Liliac dreamt of her mother. She still couldn't remember her face, but she was already picturing the hug she'd give her. The dream shifted to battle. Bullets being shot and impacting, spears penetrating opponents, arrows. But throughout it all, she ran and ran, protected by those around her. She was safe.

Juniper walked outside her room. She fixed the sleeves of her shirt and headed down. Gods, how was Aloe? How were the others? She couldn't be thinking of them, not after Dera. She was there now. Juniper's favourite memory was on those stairs. She was about seven and had been taken home from school. Her dad had frozen lemonade to make a refreshing drink.

She was sitting on those stairs when a shadow moved by the window. A motorized vehicle accompanied by its roaring sound. No matter, it just went by.

Her father walked down, making the wooden cupboards move to the rhythm. He asked her if she was enjoying her holidays, to which Juno responded she was, but she was already missing her classmates.

"Don't worry too much about it. When your mother gets back you'll take your bags and return. She's going to fix this. In the meantime," The man served two glasses of the sweet and sour drink. Of course, the so-called glasses were ceramic. They cheered, creating a rough echo around the living room, and drank. Juniper couldn't remember the taste, but she remembered smiling. It was summer. She had her first holiday in years. She would have so much time to draw, dance and sing. Maybe in a few days, her dad would let her invite her friend Xia over, and they could play with their rag dolls and wooden animals. She took another sip and moved her feet to a rhythmical sound against the stairs. Her father put a hand around her shoulder and pulled her into a hug.

That was about where the butterflies of the memory died. Juniper raised her head. Her hair was then longer than in her memory, but she felt the same wind as so many years before. And the pain in her ears as so many years before.

Bang. Arnit covered his daughter's ears with his own hands. The girl dropped her arms to her sides and kept her eyes wide open and mouth quiet until the background noise faded. Juniper only learned a few days later that the improvised holidays were because the school building had been taken over by a pair of ishine. But she's going to fix this.

Juno now walked down those stairs with the lights off, trying to remember in the dark where each step would end.

She impatiently looked out the window of her silent house. Her worst memory involved a knife against the throat of her language teacher. The woman had been assigned two jobs because she had taken too much time learning how to become a teacher, Juno remembered her uncle explaining when she complained that Miss was always tired. The girl might have been ten when she was having lunch outside the storage building's doors and an ishine walked with her teacher at their hands. They were trying to use her as a hostage to free weeds out of Program Imaginaria. But Cove's guards were faster, bullets were faster, and ishine skin is far too fragile to resist.

Her uncle would fix that. He'd make the edges safer, the inner circle impenetrable. He was going to fix this.

Juniper placed her hands over the counter and stared at the complaining refrigerator. She tried to recall when she started caring for the ishine. In retrospect, of course, she would have to. They're people that deserve care, respect, and life. But there had to be a moment in her life when something clicked in the wrong place, where indoctrination had failed and ignited rebellion. And she couldn't quite remember that.

Was it when she saw Aloe's scared eyes? Was it on one of the many occasions when she saw ishine corpses dissolve on the streets?

It dawned on her. She remembered the exact afternoon. She should have been eleven, after leaving history class. She walked with Xia back home, following a caravan of tired children surrounding them. Juniper was the only one in her class who didn't live on the southern border, and while she enjoyed having roofs that didn't leak, she had never had the chance of going out to the closest park to play. She had never played a single match of hipball, or pull the tail, or throw-them-back. She only had her sweet lemonade to think of back home, and then wait for the next day. There were so many hours of silence when she was alone at home, or with a quiet father. So many hours to think, and think, and think. And the more she thought, the less she forgot. Sometimes she still wished she could forget some more, make things harder but lighter.

She opened the refrigerator door just to feel the faintly cool air in her eyes. She remembered that day when she returned from Xia's home. She walked past the wooden houses, painted red under the sunset's light. She had to walk a few steps away from the melting corpse of an ishine that had failed its mission to attack the settlement. She entered the dark hallway of a small housing area. And through a distant creaking door came running a girl about her age, wearing a long desaturated orange dress. She buried her hands into the dead sandy pile that used to be a person and plucked out a little growing sprout. She carried it into her house and placed it over a full flower pot. Juniper stared, from the shadows, and understood for a second what she was meant to do. The girl continued obliviously watering the various flowers that grew at the edge of her window. A bald woman walked behind her with glassy eyes and kissed the girl's hair before a tear fell down her cheek.

It was all around, the calling to live beyond survival. And that night Juniper spent all her breath and tears starring at the clean concrete ceiling, wondering what she was there for, what she was meant to do.

They wouldn't fix anything. They wouldn't fix the deaths, the threats, the tears. Leilani Moore had stopped in her tracks, and Cove Marull was taking them in the wrong direction. So Juniper thought she was the only one who could help. She had seen the fear, she had seen the hope. She was a child. Her pillow was wet and cold. She'd one day wake up, and no child would have their ears covered after a gunshot.

Juno closed the door. That was enough remembering for one afternoon. She tied her hair into a ponytail and was surprised by her own height when she looked down at the distant counter. She was no longer that child of the memories, and she would never be Ro Marull again.

She served a glass of warm lemonade, mumbling Dera's name, and drank it for her.

She looked at her hands, trying to remember the particular colour of Ro's skin. The shape of her nails. Was Ro watching her that very moment, and all the Marulls that came before? They must have been arguing over her shoulder. But Ro didn't have to worry anymore.

What was Dera's favourite memory? Her worst? Who had hugged her and taken care of her? Who did she think of whenever she closed her eyes? Juniper envied how Dera got to rest, before hitting the table under her hands. She couldn't rest until there were no more Deras killed at the hands of Xias. The soldier girl had started killing. Dera would never tell a story again. Nobody was the same.