KAVANA

Prologue: The Heavens Quake

Only we believed we were trapped with creatures which we turned and doomed to evil with its forces.

In the Southern Isles, if you knew where to look, our modest village was a place of refuge and housed victims of this great power imbalance and consequences.

Kavana was a beacon of light, dim but hopeful. An exile for those needful of strength, especially from the spell-binding clasp of seventy years of warfare and thereafter.

"It's here!" one-woman cried pointing upward.

It had been thirty years since the proclaimed war took humanity from humans and the feat began within us. Savages roamed from underneath to the top of the mountains, though the tips could not bend to its howl. It rose with resilience and faith in the nature of things.

The greed was washing wearily at nature, smoke consumed the land for the first twenty and now ten years marked the promising thirty.

We were hidden from the grand nations of greed, yet we suffer from the hunger of truth which may unburden the one beside one another. For parents, I have lost in the wrestle of survival. Living on for the purpose of life to be told.

The nations that battled against each other for their desires gave life to generations of those that will only know humbleness and pain. They strapped on boots and marched blindly into the losing war of humanity. The wolves took over. It wasn't enough to satisfy, they wanted more.

The Taking began the curse which would take centuries to heal but generations to affect. A nation once plentiful grew barren and colour lost its glint.

"It can't be, it's not so." Grandma fell to her knees, opened arms to the glaring sight on the top of the earth.

The colours were now in sight. My love tears, dripping and weeping for the opening we became blessed with. A dazzling baby blue with clumps of white cotton floating and out a ball of radiance struck out against the clearing smoke. From a bird's eye, a scarcely red flower awakened peeking up to the rays, almost forcibly from the soil.

Once stained with the soldier's roots which flared brightly against teary eyes, grandma tells of such horrors. Though the horrors have gone, the memory lives within generations to house its trauma. Its whispers are of strength when it murmurs its loss and grief. Not many share their breath on the terror, kids and children lost to its story. A new generation lost.

A history wanting to be forgotten. Still, the wrinkled hands attend to the souls whispering under the soil, singing their stories for ears to hear. Unlike the mothers who turn their noses and close their children's ears to the ringing of bells, chiming and awakening.

The cold chill could not be warmed by the heat of the radiance. Whilst the people were enamoured by the warmth it did not rid the doubts of its arrival now, only worn at the coming of the next battle.

Because we were once humans, now we are animals.

We succumbed to the darkness of our evil and forgot our humanity.

The clearing of the smoke illuminated the tropical greenery of Kavana's landscape and animals which were hidden from us. Its returned beauty baffled me, amongst the eyes of the new age that was forgotten.

We survived on the mere glow of the grey which robbed mother nature's luxury to us, the flora and fauna was folklore.

Our hands worked the barren land and sought out animals we could find, we took what was needed. Nothing more, nothing less. Within days of the apparent sky gracing life again on the island, smiles became easy to find.