Stolen Truth

6

"Do you think they're pretty?" Dove asked, pointing at the hills.

"I don't know," I replied, lost in thought.

We had managed to sneak away for the day and Dove took me through the woods and to a huge valley. The grass really was greener on the other side, it almost seemed to sparkle in the sun. The purple, pink, red, and blue flowers that littered the large expanse of grass reminded me of Viper from the other night. It was like I could find her everywhere I looked now, Owl didn't even need his powers to know what was on my mind (although I'm sure that also helped him quite a bit).

"I used to love looking at them," Dove sighed.

"Why," I asked, trying to distract myself.

"When I was younger I was so angry at the world for making me like this, for putting me here and making me lose everything whilst the blanks took it all from me. I used to believe I could run all the way to the hills and past the horizon and that I could go forever until it all went away."

"What about now."

"Now I'm just lost. I wouldn't know which direction to run or when to stop. Now I think I need to fight more than anything, otherwise where will all of that anger go. Years of being annoyed doesn't just go away, it slowly eats at you and destroys you until you have nothing left."

"Has it started to destroy you?"

"Yes, but I put it all into training and making sure Bunny is okay and that the world keeps turning. Bunny is happy here she thinks that camp is paradise, I can't take that away from her."

"Are you happy here?"

"In the valley?"

"No, in the camp."

"No," Dove scoffed, "That place feels like a prison, but we can't just leave. We have to fight because what if I have kids? How am I supposed to tell them that their friends are dying because I never did anything?"

"But your parents never did anything. Surely they must've known that a war was coming?"

"That's true, my mother told me that the king didn't want to react in a violent manner, she said he didn't want to prove that we were bad."

"Saving your people isn't bad," I said, becoming enraged.

"I know, but many people agreed with him. They were all content to wait and be attacked, they didn't care about the effect this would have on us."

"What happened to all the adults anyway?"

"They killed almost all of them. Their agenda was to capture kids and use them for experimentation or something, they wanted to erase all of us. As you can tell, some of managed to escape but as far as we know the rest were killed. They knew it would take years for kids to start to fight back as most of us were only young at the time. Whilst they've been building an army we've been waiting to grow up."

"Why didn't anyone do anything though? Surely, they didn't hit everywhere at once? From what I can remember of what the blanks taught us, there was the capital and lots of smaller towns, why couldn't people escape or get an army together in time for the next one?"

"No one really talked to the other towns I think, or at least that's what my father said. They attacked the smaller towns first and everyone in the capital was snobby and rich so they refused to help the others or even believe what they were saying. Unfortunately, at that point it was too late and they got into the capital and destroyed us. They killed the whole royal family."

"What's so important about the royal family if the king just made a bunch of bad decisions?"

"Apparently we're more powerful with them. Viper probably told you that the king had one of every power?"