Prologue: Dawn
Viery, Planet Reach
July 5th, 2589
The lady sighed. She tucked her white hair behind her ear with one hand as she looked to the sunrise. Strangely, she had no more than fifty-five years.
It had been almost a month since her husband had died. She missed him a lot. There had been no funeral, no body, only dogtags. He had gone to war one day and two weeks later some ONI spooks appeared at her doorstep and simply said that he was gone. At least they had the decency to left after they gave her his dogtags, right before she strangled them demanding answers.
She was wearing the dog tags at her neck right now.
Until death do us part.
She got up and turned to enter the kiva. When she had left the house her granddaughter had been asleep on the sofa. Little Aliz was barely seven. Too young to understand what had happened to her grandfather. Not even the lady understood what had happened. ONI didn't disclose such information.
Aliz was living with her grandmother since her mother and father were serving the UNSC. She had been here when the agents had come. Damn, not even the lady's own daughter knew her father had died! The lady shook that thought.
She walked over to where she thought Aliz was sleeping, and the little girl, now very awake eyed her granny with big brown eyes.
"Granny, would you please tell me a story? Pretty, pretty please?"
The lady smiled and picked her up. It wasn't that uncommon at all. Aliz had always loved to hear her stories, about princesses and dragons and aliens and SPARTANs…
The little girl put her arms around her grandmother's neck, and the lady went to the outside once again. They sat on the porch looking at the sunrise.
The lady began "Once upon a time…"