Prove Me Wrong (Rusame)

Roll Credits

Narrator's POV

Imagine you are in a forest. Lost and alone in the dark. Cold, scared, and desperately trying to find a way out, a way back to anything you knew. Civilization, sound, light, just something. Now imagine as you are stumbling over roots, walking into trees or tree branches, and tripping over the thousands of things that could be laying around, you spot something. In the distance, you see a light. You hear a sound. So you go to it, hope pushing you to move, to ignore the pain you feel in your feet from walking for hours. Your throat that hurts from crying, yelling, and screaming, now stinging from your heavy breathing.

You come to a fire. No one is there. It's just a small fire pit in what looks like a campground. There are no tents, no evidence of people. Just a small cleared circle with a fallen log for a seat and dug out pit with fire.

Would you stay by the fire or would you keep trying to find your way out?

The fire has warmth, light, safety. To leave it would to risk losing something that can keep you alive. Wild animals avoid the fires, they are a premonition for death to them. You could stay and rest, gather your thoughts. Even if it isn't better, a light in the dark is a light in the dark.

But who built that fire? Doesn't matter, this is a metaphor.

But staying by the fire for now, at least until the sun rises, seems like the best thing to do, yes?

"What the hell?"

Now imagine this, you can do I believe in you, America was the one in the metaphor. He wasn't lost in the woods per se, but he was lost and in the dark. He has been wandering around for years, unsure where he going or where he came from. He's passed from fire to fire so much he doesn't even remember a life before that.

So suddenly, faced with sunlight for the first time in forever, he's stunned. The memories of his life before the eternal dark forest come rushing to him as fast as the sunlight on his skin. Too fast to understand, he could only shield his eyes and squint at the bright light as he tried to comprehend everything at once.

But almost as soon as he recognized the sun, he was thrown back into the darkness. Not by his own choice, no. And not in a metaphorical way, either. He got knocked out.

Haud panicked and raised her hand at the two boys, exclaiming, "së:dah! (sleep!)" The air in front of her hand shimmered and the boys collapsed to the ground where they stood.

The only ones who weren't stunned enough to move were Russia and Kaz, who ran to America and Canada, respectively. They were still breathing, appearing to only have been rendered unconscious.

"This is why we don't let outsiders in!" A tribed said, starting a chorus of others to join in on the atrocity.

"We never should have trusted this outsider!"

"He lead them to us!"

"We can't keep doing this."

"Swadáöhdi:yos! (You listen carefully!)" Haud shouted over the voices, trying to calm them. They ignored her, angrily shouting instead to take care of them, do something, knock the other two out too so they can get away. That if she didn't do it, then they would.

Sensing the threat, Russia grabbed a nearby staff that was dropped by someone and held it, ready to fight with it. Kaz, without his sword, held Canada and America close to him, extending his wings over them both as a form of shield. He looked to Russia for direction, getting ready to jump and run if he had to.

"No! No fighting," Haud forced herself into everyone's line of sight by putting herself between the other tribes and the outsiders. "We don't want to start a war, we can't afford to lose more than we already have."