“Oh father,” she breathed. “Look at the sunset. Look at the colors.”
This hill was her favorite spot in all the worlds. She and her father had years’ worth of conversations sitting on this exact hill, under this exact tree. Discussions, debates, life lessons, stories, memories. So much had been shared on this one grassy knoll.
“Man will never create colors like this,” she said softly. “There is no view like this anywhere else, father. This spot, it’s special.”
She got to her feet, brushing loosened grass and pebbles from her leather armor as she stared at the immense ginger sphere sinking behind the brilliantly orange clouds. Pink tipped the edges of the sky, dividing the heavens between the lingering day and the oncoming pitch of night.
“There have been sillier reasons to fight wars.” She lifted her horned helmet to her head and slowly turned in her spot, looking towards the east where the evening skies were alight with a different kind of glow. Smoke billowed heavily over the once lush fields as fire roared from every direction. The shouts and cries of her warriors echoed through the night, getting lost in the rustle of the leaves in her tree’s canopy. Arrows were loosed to spread more flame, more destruction, more death. Men and women were felled, never to move again.
She slowly began her descent down the hill towards the mouth of chaos. She picked up her pace as the incline steepened. But before she was too far, she called back to her father’s tombstone, “Save a seat for me, father. I’ll be with you shortly.”
And into the fray she flew, her broadsword and axe swinging at the ends of her arms like natural extensions of her body. She fought as her father had taught her to; with her whole heart believing in her cause. In the cause he had started.
She fought for the warriors who had already fallen. She fought for the families that were torn asunder. She fought for the lands that would never be tended to again. She fought for the animals that ran for their very lives into terrains unknown. She fought for those still fighting with her. But most of all, she fought for her father.
And when a flaming arrow pierced her left breast, it was he that caught her as she fell to the ground. It was he that smiled proudly at her with tears in his eyes. It was he that took her hand, guided her from her broken body, and led her into the flaming oranges of the sunset that she had been admiring not even an hour before.
