the game

the game:bonds

Chapter Two: Bonds

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life."- Richard Bach

    I sat alone in the meadow, laying down thinking about the past. It seemed like such a peaceful day it was hard to believe that a war was being fought. Hell, it was hard to believe half of the crazy stuff that was going on at the moment. Though there were many things to be thought of, I preferred to think about the past. When things weren't so complicated. When things were just so much easier than they are now. When things were different......

    The war. The war. That's all anyone ever talked about when I was a child. How to stop the war. We need more food because of the war. Our soldiers are dying. I heard those things every day when I was a child, and that's how I grew up. I knew nothing but war. I knew nothing but pain, and loss. Often times, my mother would tell me stories about her childhood, in the times before this war started. I was always so happy to hear those stories, and often times I would pretend that the war wasn't really a war, and it would be over soon. I wanted the peacefulness that my mother described. I wanted no desired, peace more than anything else. Then again, I look back on how it all started, and it makes me think. Can peace ever truly exist? Can it truly come about? Or will the short-lived peacefulness just lead to more conflicts in the future? There will always be problems among people, and those problems will get bigger and bigger until someone blows up, and before you know it..... It's another war. Then, there's more pain and loss.

    Supposedly this war all started because of a misunderstanding. Supposedly over a hundred years ago, the Rain country somehow snuck into the Sun country, and killed their lord. If that wasn't bad enough, because the Rain had problems with the Forest country, they framed the whole murder on the Forest. The Sun wouldn't believe the Forest lord when he tried to explain that his country, and people were innocent of this crime, and before anyone could blink, the Sun had declared war on the Forest. Of course, both sides got their allies involved, and then it became a world war. It only got worse when the small country of Snow accused the Forest's ally, The Land of Stars, of taking their Chosen One.  That was when I was a child. Thankfully during that time, the Rain and the Forest had an alliance for almost twenty years.

    Like I mentioned before, I don't have much memories of my mother, or father. They died when I was just four, but Tenzo often reminded me how much I looked like my mother. We have no photographs of them, so it's not like I can verify what he tells me. However, after my family's death, Tenzo and I were left to fend for ourselves. During this time of war, not many places were very welcome, and warm towards orphans. There were many like us. So we were left to our own tools, and of course that lead Tenzo to become protective when it came to me. He would never let me get into any dangerous situations, and he certainly never let anyone speak badly of me. He'd beat-up anyone who picked a fight with me. He also was the one who would steal in order to get us by. So, because of everything that we went through together, it caused us to become very close to one another, but it also caused us to be wary of others. We never knew just when we would lose another person who was close to us.....

    Anyways, getting back to the story. When our parents died, we were left to use our own tools to survive. Sure we were from the Rain, and the Forest could have easily taken us in earlier, but there were few people in the world who would actually trust someone form my clan, even a child. So for three years, we were left on our own to survive.  When I was seven, the Forest lord finally invited us to stay in the City of Lakes. It was the capital of the Forest, and one of the most influential places in the world.

    We had just arrived in the City, and so we were just scooping things out. We were walking down the street in our new clothes. I wore a dark purple shirt with a collar that went half way up my neck, and a zipper down the middle of the shirt. I had on a short, white skirt, and black boots that went up to my ankle. My dark hair, which was about shoulder length at the time, was held back by a dark purple headband. My brother wore some kind of dark shirt with a high collar that covered his neck, and baggy white pants. He also wore black boots. It was a hot day, but I was getting over a sickness, and I was still weak. My brother held me close to his body to warm me up, and we both stared at the ground. As you can imagine, walking with your head down in the middle of a busy street was probably a stupid idea, but at the time it was almost like fate.