Eulogy
Marco spotted her from across the room and his blood boiled to a stop. He
allowed himself one moment of despair, before that bright ray of light from A to B was
all that he saw.
The greater good… He whispered to himself, not really needing to be
convinced. He knew what he had to do.
His mother would never recognize him, he was a gorilla, a far cry from the child
she'd abandoned years ago. His mother wouldn't recognize him if he stood in front of
her as a human, much less in this shape. Well, she might, but he doubted it. He was
older now, in so many ways.
Blood had already been drawn and it ran down Marco's leathery skin as he loped
across the room at an awkward pace, his ham sized fists swinging at his sides when he
wasn't using them to slam a Hork-Bajir out of the way.
She wasn't looking at him, her chocolate brown eyes were looking through
crosshairs as she pointed the dracon beam she held at Tobias. With only a whisper of air
betraying his actions, Marco's hand slammed down on the dracon beam, and he heard a
brittle snap as he broke his mothers' wrist.
Visser One snarled in pain and unbridled fury. "They'll kill you." She informed
him, "You'll never make it out of here alive!" she told him triumphantly.
I know. He said sadly, and her eyes clouded over.
"Who…?" She stared at him quizzically. This is how he had wanted it to happen,
but he never thought it COULD happen. He wanted her to know that he was the one. He
was the one that was going to release her from her prison. The last thing she would know
is that he'd saved her.
The battle raged on around them, but they were both oblivious.
"My God…" Tears blurred her vision, "My baby…Marco…Is that you?" The
change that came over her was too complete, the best actress couldn't compete with that
devestated, hopeful wistfulness in her eyes. It was her.
Yes. She smiled gently, nodded.
"Do it before she comes back, I want to go being the one in control. If you get
me…"
I get Visser One.
"Right." She smiled.
I love you. He didn't know where he found the strength to say it.
"I love you too, precious. Tell your father I—Ah!" she cringed, "Quickly!
Quickly, please…" she looked up at him with pleading eyes.
It was a curious feeling. He was a marionette, suspended by strings, his hands
rising into the air and plunging down on their own accord. Smashing his mother's skull
as he snapped her neck.
Good-bye. he whispered. Then plunged back into the battle.
A few months later…
Tobias' death was quiet, just like him. He'd gotten too close to the blade of a
Hork-Bajir and had simply gotten his slender windpipe slit. He might've been able to
demorph, but he was knocked unconscious as he hit the floor…and he never woke up.
Rachel saw his still body across that raging battlefield of desks and office
equipment and began shrieking his name. I remember those bloodcurdling cries, I had
thought the very blood in my veins would freeze.
"Tobias!" Over and over, some perverse plea, some kind of twisted prayer out of
her mind for mercy. Don't you get it? Rachel, honey, I figured it out, why didn't you?
There is no mercy. There is justice, yes, sometimes. But no mercy, not for us.
Not for any of us.
She was spectacular in that battle. And all the other battles after that, come to
think of it. Furious and raving, now not half-crazed, but fully insane and out for blood.
You had to be careful not to come near that frothing, furry whirlwind. She was just as
likely to rip your limbs off as she was theirs.
She really did damage. She let none of them retreat, but went deeper into the
complex, ripping out hearts, leaving trails of intestines behind her, blood coating her
shaggy fur.
We found her later. It wasn't hard, you just followed the gore right back to where
it had all started. Right back to where, for Tobias, it had all ended. Her long blond hair
hung around her, just as bloody and tattered as the room.
She was singing…somehow. Well, in retrospect, the only part of it that was
singing was the fact that she hit notes. Her voice was scratchy through her tears, and the
lines were blurred by sobs.
"Hush a bye, don't you cry, go to sleep a little baby,
When you wake, you will have, all the pretty little horses…"
She sat there, stroking his fur. In death he was very impressive, a massive
leopard, stretched out, museum quality, leaking what was left of him onto the floor.
"Pretty birdie, such a pretty bird, so lovely…" Her voice caught, like ripped fabric
catching on a nail, on that word "love".
It was so abrupt, her voice breaking into that wail. Ax had left, so had Jake, they
were scouting the compound, making sure we'd taken care of everything. But Cassie and
I remained. We tried to make her leave, but nothing worked. We begged, pleaded,
bribed, coerced, cajoled. She merely wailed.
Then she stopped.
The silence was eerie.
Then…a whisper.
"We won." A pause, then: "Didn't you hear me? We won." I had to strain to hear
her, "You can be human now. We can go to school. Get married. Aren't you happy,
Tobias?" she pleaded, "Aren't you happy, sweetheart, lover, cupcake? AREN"T YOU
HAPPY???" she demanded. "THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!!!" she screamed.
"THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!!!!" She wrapped her arms around his torn bloody
neck, and I knew she was talking about him.
"This is what I wanted this is what I wanted this is what is wanted…" her voice
trailed off and she whispered into his tufted ear, as if confiding a secret.
"You were what I wanted." She gasped in a breath, "You are all I wanted." She
began to sob. But it was healthy this time, no insanity or glazed eyes, just grief. Tears
streamed down her face. I turned to a shocked, numb Cassie whose eyes had receded
miles since I'd seen them last.
"Let's get her out of here."
"Yeah…"
"You get her…I'll get, ah…" I swallowed.
"Thank-you, Marco." She said, professional courtesy, I guess. No one really likes
handling corpses. The morphing back to gorilla was instinctive, empty. No thought for
anything. Not yet. Wait until they can't hear you to scream and wail and rip your hair
out. You can't let them know how you really feel. That will never do.
To the gorilla his body was light, fragile, but I knew what I held in my hands was
one of nature's finest works of art.
No one said a word when we buried him.
As far as I know, none of his relatives know he's missing.
Or if they did notice, none of them care.
I came back to the spot, in the mountains, next to the pass for the Valley of the
Hork-Bajir, one week after I'd visited my mothers' grave. My real mothers' body was
disposed of, how I don't know, after I killed her a few months back. But, it felt
comforting to visit her headstone at least. See her name etched in something permanent.
Anyway, I took a few of her flowers and laid them on his grave.
I suppose it'll do until I can get him that metal.
Huh. I guess I'll never change.
Always joking…
Medals?
Hah.
We get scars.
Years later…
The day we won was a dark day.
It was surprisingly easy. The Andalites supplied us with a ground force to
command (the "command" part came grudgingly, only with the sponsorship of Aximili)
and proceeded to blockade the Yeerks, to keep any supplies or troops from landing on
Earth. After that, it was only a matter of systematically wiping them out. After a while,
the Yeerks started coming to us to surrender.
Jake nearly danced a jig when Tom walked into the Andalite camp and knelt in
submission. All the humans now know about the infestation, and are afraid, after the
fact. But at least now they are wary.
The president was busy signing an intergalactic treaty, the hearing for Ax had just
been settled, he was declared a hero and made an honorary prince until he finished his
academy, then he would get to be a real one.
As it turns out, the Yeerks defeat on Earth led to their complete downfall. The
Yeerks kept on losing troops, trying to reinforce Earth, and ended up losing galaxies.
The date was September 12, 2004. Sounds like a short time, but you'd be
surprised how slow time passes in hell.
The entire Yeerk Empire surrendered to Andalite will that day. There is still
much debate on what to do with them, but all of the Yeerks who urged peace were given
asylum and have begun living in willing donors of bodies. They have actually made a lot
of progress in the psychology fields, they are diligent workers and obsessed with
redeeming themselves. They're our little bit of good out of all this horror, I guess.
I had gone to tell my best friend, Rachel, the news.
But she'd found out first.
You see, she'd never really recovered after Tobias died. I think that she died right
along with him that day. Her soul gave up, but the rest of her knew there was a battle to
fight and stuck it out.
But I guess she decided that her work was done.
The bloody razor blades on the bathroom floor sent chills up my spine.
I knew what had happened, but I refused to accept I'd lost another comrade. Lost
another friend.
"Rachel? Rachel? It's me, Cassie. Are you here?" I swallowed, then looked
around the corner into the bathroom.
There, in the tub, was a fully clothed Rachel, dressed in her morphing suit,
clutching her Medal of Honor. Her glazed eyes stared at the ceiling. The tub was still
running, and pinkish liquid spilled over the sides and onto my boots.
"Jake!!" I screamed the first name that came to mind. They had stationed us all in
this little corridor on the newly built Andalite flagship orbiting Earth. The only place
they had on the ship that had anemities like bathtubs.
"JAKE!!! Oh, god…. JAAAAKE!"
"What?" His brown hair was mussed, his eyes were wild, "We won Cassie, we…"
he was breathless with excitement, his chest heaved. He had run all the way from
command just to tell me. My mind catalogued this as a sweet thing to do as tears dripped
from my eyes.
"Cassie? Honey…" He stepped towards me…then stopped. "Oh…" he looked
down at my feet, at the bloody razor blades.
"No…" he whispered, anguished, knowing, shaking his head, "No…"
I could only nod.
"Come here." He opened his arms, but I refused. I turned my eyes back to my
best friend.
"What are you so afraid of, Jake." I asked him, with a voice so calm it was cold,
"You've seen so many already, what difference does one corpse make?"
He stepped towards me on unsteady legs, without looking where I was staring, he
wrapped his arms around me. Finally, he looked at her. Her gashed wrists… she'd left
no note. Typical Rachel, leaving us in suspense, eternally the diva, eternally the drama
queen.
"Let's go." He whispered, after forever had passed.
So I went.
Decades later…
Aximili called me "Prince" no longer. Now he was one himself.
He was old now. I'm approaching sixty, as is my wife Cassie, and my still best
friend, Ambassador/General Marco. While we whittle away our hours around animals
and our family, Marco traipses about the galaxy, putting right all the wrongs, visiting,
meeting with Andalite dignitaries. Erek the Chee helps him sometimes, but we don't see
much of them anymore, they kind of go where needed.
Ax flew a fleet around the galaxy, searching for new races to bring into the
galactic alliance that the Yeerk threat spawned. He was the best at what he did, Prince
Elfangor had been dwarfed by his younger brother, they said. Someone had thought it a
compliment, and told Aximili. They probably still have the scars to show for it.
It was a normal, routine flight. It was a new race, but the Andalites had sent out
the welcome beacons, thought the race was only about a level 4, what humans were about
a century ago. No real threat.
Aximili never got a chance to issue an order, the entire fleet was incinerated by an
odd ray of light that shot out from the planet.
No one goes NEAR that quadrant of space anymore, needless to say.
There is a nice memorial for him on his planet. The Andalites mourned for weeks
after that, and some never really recovered. Thank God Tobias wasn't alive, he would
have hopped on the nearest ship and tried to blow that whole system out of the sky.
I guess now it's down to three Animorphs.
Marco.
Me, Jake.
And My Wife, Cassie.
Tobias…Rachel…Aximili…
Somewhere, somewhen, where even the Ellimist can't reach, I hope they know
we miss them terribly.
About a century later…
There really is nothing more to say that you need to know, really. Cassie and
Jake, pretty much died at an obscenely old age. Jake died first, of a heart failure, in his
sleep, and Cassie followed a few years later, found out on her front porch, her rocking
chair still going after her heart had stopped.
Marco? Marco still plows on. I can't tell you why. Everyone wants to know
why, at 200, Marco still looks sixty. But that's classified information.
My race helps out whenever we can. I pretty much stick with Marco, help him
out, keep him company. The two of us are the only ones left. Well, I don't know if I
count, but Marco insists I do.
Don't worry, the two of us? We'll be here years yet. Trying to fix what's broken,
trying to keep our memories alive and, in my case, still trying to kill off some of them.
But when the end comes, and it will, Marco will join the rest of them.
What, me? You're worried about little old Erek the Chee?
Don't. After they are well and truly done, I'll step into another story.
Maybe this time, the story will be mine.
A millennia later…
The girl was dressed in the simple clothing of any young child. Her face was
streaked with dirt as she explored the rambling hills and abrupt ravines that dotted the
property. Her mother galloped about next to her, bluish-tan fur rippling in the wind,
looking down at her human child.
Do you like it, Alondra?
"Oh, yes, it's perfect."
They paused at an unpolluted stream.
"Thank goodness they thought to preserve the Earth, it's so pretty here."
Yes, we were lucky, they finally allowed people to come back and populate it
after so long.
"But who would have wanted to live here a hundred years ago anyway? Can you
imagine the stench?"
Mother and daughter both laughed at the ridiculous image of the poor former
inhabitants of Earth with their full body suits and gas masks.
We've come a long way. Alondra's mother whispered to herself.
They both drank, Alondra kneeling to cup the crystal clear water in her hands, her
mother pausing to put a dainty hoof in the water.
Suddenly, Alondra caught a glint of metal peeking out from under the silt.
"What's that?" Alondra asked, even as she worked to clear away the mud.
I'm not sure, sweetheart. Be careful of it!
Alondra read, painstakingly,
"In honor of the Animorphs. In commemoration of their sacrifice. 2005."
"What does that mean?"
2005…Oh! Probably something about the Yeerk War, I think…I can't be
sure…
"The Yeerk War? What was that?"
And the wheel turns…
Marco spotted her from across the room and his blood boiled to a stop. He
allowed himself one moment of despair, before that bright ray of light from A to B was
all that he saw.
The greater good… He whispered to himself, not really needing to be
convinced. He knew what he had to do.
His mother would never recognize him, he was a gorilla, a far cry from the child
she'd abandoned years ago. His mother wouldn't recognize him if he stood in front of
her as a human, much less in this shape. Well, she might, but he doubted it. He was
older now, in so many ways.
Blood had already been drawn and it ran down Marco's leathery skin as he loped
across the room at an awkward pace, his ham sized fists swinging at his sides when he
wasn't using them to slam a Hork-Bajir out of the way.
She wasn't looking at him, her chocolate brown eyes were looking through
crosshairs as she pointed the dracon beam she held at Tobias. With only a whisper of air
betraying his actions, Marco's hand slammed down on the dracon beam, and he heard a
brittle snap as he broke his mothers' wrist.
Visser One snarled in pain and unbridled fury. "They'll kill you." She informed
him, "You'll never make it out of here alive!" she told him triumphantly.
I know. He said sadly, and her eyes clouded over.
"Who…?" She stared at him quizzically. This is how he had wanted it to happen,
but he never thought it COULD happen. He wanted her to know that he was the one. He
was the one that was going to release her from her prison. The last thing she would know
is that he'd saved her.
The battle raged on around them, but they were both oblivious.
"My God…" Tears blurred her vision, "My baby…Marco…Is that you?" The
change that came over her was too complete, the best actress couldn't compete with that
devestated, hopeful wistfulness in her eyes. It was her.
Yes. She smiled gently, nodded.
"Do it before she comes back, I want to go being the one in control. If you get
me…"
I get Visser One.
"Right." She smiled.
I love you. He didn't know where he found the strength to say it.
"I love you too, precious. Tell your father I—Ah!" she cringed, "Quickly!
Quickly, please…" she looked up at him with pleading eyes.
It was a curious feeling. He was a marionette, suspended by strings, his hands
rising into the air and plunging down on their own accord. Smashing his mother's skull
as he snapped her neck.
Good-bye. he whispered. Then plunged back into the battle.
A few months later…
Tobias' death was quiet, just like him. He'd gotten too close to the blade of a
Hork-Bajir and had simply gotten his slender windpipe slit. He might've been able to
demorph, but he was knocked unconscious as he hit the floor…and he never woke up.
Rachel saw his still body across that raging battlefield of desks and office
equipment and began shrieking his name. I remember those bloodcurdling cries, I had
thought the very blood in my veins would freeze.
"Tobias!" Over and over, some perverse plea, some kind of twisted prayer out of
her mind for mercy. Don't you get it? Rachel, honey, I figured it out, why didn't you?
There is no mercy. There is justice, yes, sometimes. But no mercy, not for us.
Not for any of us.
She was spectacular in that battle. And all the other battles after that, come to
think of it. Furious and raving, now not half-crazed, but fully insane and out for blood.
You had to be careful not to come near that frothing, furry whirlwind. She was just as
likely to rip your limbs off as she was theirs.
She really did damage. She let none of them retreat, but went deeper into the
complex, ripping out hearts, leaving trails of intestines behind her, blood coating her
shaggy fur.
We found her later. It wasn't hard, you just followed the gore right back to where
it had all started. Right back to where, for Tobias, it had all ended. Her long blond hair
hung around her, just as bloody and tattered as the room.
She was singing…somehow. Well, in retrospect, the only part of it that was
singing was the fact that she hit notes. Her voice was scratchy through her tears, and the
lines were blurred by sobs.
"Hush a bye, don't you cry, go to sleep a little baby,
When you wake, you will have, all the pretty little horses…"
She sat there, stroking his fur. In death he was very impressive, a massive
leopard, stretched out, museum quality, leaking what was left of him onto the floor.
"Pretty birdie, such a pretty bird, so lovely…" Her voice caught, like ripped fabric
catching on a nail, on that word "love".
It was so abrupt, her voice breaking into that wail. Ax had left, so had Jake, they
were scouting the compound, making sure we'd taken care of everything. But Cassie and
I remained. We tried to make her leave, but nothing worked. We begged, pleaded,
bribed, coerced, cajoled. She merely wailed.
Then she stopped.
The silence was eerie.
Then…a whisper.
"We won." A pause, then: "Didn't you hear me? We won." I had to strain to hear
her, "You can be human now. We can go to school. Get married. Aren't you happy,
Tobias?" she pleaded, "Aren't you happy, sweetheart, lover, cupcake? AREN"T YOU
HAPPY???" she demanded. "THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!!!" she screamed.
"THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!!!!" She wrapped her arms around his torn bloody
neck, and I knew she was talking about him.
"This is what I wanted this is what I wanted this is what is wanted…" her voice
trailed off and she whispered into his tufted ear, as if confiding a secret.
"You were what I wanted." She gasped in a breath, "You are all I wanted." She
began to sob. But it was healthy this time, no insanity or glazed eyes, just grief. Tears
streamed down her face. I turned to a shocked, numb Cassie whose eyes had receded
miles since I'd seen them last.
"Let's get her out of here."
"Yeah…"
"You get her…I'll get, ah…" I swallowed.
"Thank-you, Marco." She said, professional courtesy, I guess. No one really likes
handling corpses. The morphing back to gorilla was instinctive, empty. No thought for
anything. Not yet. Wait until they can't hear you to scream and wail and rip your hair
out. You can't let them know how you really feel. That will never do.
To the gorilla his body was light, fragile, but I knew what I held in my hands was
one of nature's finest works of art.
No one said a word when we buried him.
As far as I know, none of his relatives know he's missing.
Or if they did notice, none of them care.
I came back to the spot, in the mountains, next to the pass for the Valley of the
Hork-Bajir, one week after I'd visited my mothers' grave. My real mothers' body was
disposed of, how I don't know, after I killed her a few months back. But, it felt
comforting to visit her headstone at least. See her name etched in something permanent.
Anyway, I took a few of her flowers and laid them on his grave.
I suppose it'll do until I can get him that metal.
Huh. I guess I'll never change.
Always joking…
Medals?
Hah.
We get scars.
Years later…
The day we won was a dark day.
It was surprisingly easy. The Andalites supplied us with a ground force to
command (the "command" part came grudgingly, only with the sponsorship of Aximili)
and proceeded to blockade the Yeerks, to keep any supplies or troops from landing on
Earth. After that, it was only a matter of systematically wiping them out. After a while,
the Yeerks started coming to us to surrender.
Jake nearly danced a jig when Tom walked into the Andalite camp and knelt in
submission. All the humans now know about the infestation, and are afraid, after the
fact. But at least now they are wary.
The president was busy signing an intergalactic treaty, the hearing for Ax had just
been settled, he was declared a hero and made an honorary prince until he finished his
academy, then he would get to be a real one.
As it turns out, the Yeerks defeat on Earth led to their complete downfall. The
Yeerks kept on losing troops, trying to reinforce Earth, and ended up losing galaxies.
The date was September 12, 2004. Sounds like a short time, but you'd be
surprised how slow time passes in hell.
The entire Yeerk Empire surrendered to Andalite will that day. There is still
much debate on what to do with them, but all of the Yeerks who urged peace were given
asylum and have begun living in willing donors of bodies. They have actually made a lot
of progress in the psychology fields, they are diligent workers and obsessed with
redeeming themselves. They're our little bit of good out of all this horror, I guess.
I had gone to tell my best friend, Rachel, the news.
But she'd found out first.
You see, she'd never really recovered after Tobias died. I think that she died right
along with him that day. Her soul gave up, but the rest of her knew there was a battle to
fight and stuck it out.
But I guess she decided that her work was done.
The bloody razor blades on the bathroom floor sent chills up my spine.
I knew what had happened, but I refused to accept I'd lost another comrade. Lost
another friend.
"Rachel? Rachel? It's me, Cassie. Are you here?" I swallowed, then looked
around the corner into the bathroom.
There, in the tub, was a fully clothed Rachel, dressed in her morphing suit,
clutching her Medal of Honor. Her glazed eyes stared at the ceiling. The tub was still
running, and pinkish liquid spilled over the sides and onto my boots.
"Jake!!" I screamed the first name that came to mind. They had stationed us all in
this little corridor on the newly built Andalite flagship orbiting Earth. The only place
they had on the ship that had anemities like bathtubs.
"JAKE!!! Oh, god…. JAAAAKE!"
"What?" His brown hair was mussed, his eyes were wild, "We won Cassie, we…"
he was breathless with excitement, his chest heaved. He had run all the way from
command just to tell me. My mind catalogued this as a sweet thing to do as tears dripped
from my eyes.
"Cassie? Honey…" He stepped towards me…then stopped. "Oh…" he looked
down at my feet, at the bloody razor blades.
"No…" he whispered, anguished, knowing, shaking his head, "No…"
I could only nod.
"Come here." He opened his arms, but I refused. I turned my eyes back to my
best friend.
"What are you so afraid of, Jake." I asked him, with a voice so calm it was cold,
"You've seen so many already, what difference does one corpse make?"
He stepped towards me on unsteady legs, without looking where I was staring, he
wrapped his arms around me. Finally, he looked at her. Her gashed wrists… she'd left
no note. Typical Rachel, leaving us in suspense, eternally the diva, eternally the drama
queen.
"Let's go." He whispered, after forever had passed.
So I went.
Decades later…
Aximili called me "Prince" no longer. Now he was one himself.
He was old now. I'm approaching sixty, as is my wife Cassie, and my still best
friend, Ambassador/General Marco. While we whittle away our hours around animals
and our family, Marco traipses about the galaxy, putting right all the wrongs, visiting,
meeting with Andalite dignitaries. Erek the Chee helps him sometimes, but we don't see
much of them anymore, they kind of go where needed.
Ax flew a fleet around the galaxy, searching for new races to bring into the
galactic alliance that the Yeerk threat spawned. He was the best at what he did, Prince
Elfangor had been dwarfed by his younger brother, they said. Someone had thought it a
compliment, and told Aximili. They probably still have the scars to show for it.
It was a normal, routine flight. It was a new race, but the Andalites had sent out
the welcome beacons, thought the race was only about a level 4, what humans were about
a century ago. No real threat.
Aximili never got a chance to issue an order, the entire fleet was incinerated by an
odd ray of light that shot out from the planet.
No one goes NEAR that quadrant of space anymore, needless to say.
There is a nice memorial for him on his planet. The Andalites mourned for weeks
after that, and some never really recovered. Thank God Tobias wasn't alive, he would
have hopped on the nearest ship and tried to blow that whole system out of the sky.
I guess now it's down to three Animorphs.
Marco.
Me, Jake.
And My Wife, Cassie.
Tobias…Rachel…Aximili…
Somewhere, somewhen, where even the Ellimist can't reach, I hope they know
we miss them terribly.
About a century later…
There really is nothing more to say that you need to know, really. Cassie and
Jake, pretty much died at an obscenely old age. Jake died first, of a heart failure, in his
sleep, and Cassie followed a few years later, found out on her front porch, her rocking
chair still going after her heart had stopped.
Marco? Marco still plows on. I can't tell you why. Everyone wants to know
why, at 200, Marco still looks sixty. But that's classified information.
My race helps out whenever we can. I pretty much stick with Marco, help him
out, keep him company. The two of us are the only ones left. Well, I don't know if I
count, but Marco insists I do.
Don't worry, the two of us? We'll be here years yet. Trying to fix what's broken,
trying to keep our memories alive and, in my case, still trying to kill off some of them.
But when the end comes, and it will, Marco will join the rest of them.
What, me? You're worried about little old Erek the Chee?
Don't. After they are well and truly done, I'll step into another story.
Maybe this time, the story will be mine.
A millennia later…
The girl was dressed in the simple clothing of any young child. Her face was
streaked with dirt as she explored the rambling hills and abrupt ravines that dotted the
property. Her mother galloped about next to her, bluish-tan fur rippling in the wind,
looking down at her human child.
Do you like it, Alondra?
"Oh, yes, it's perfect."
They paused at an unpolluted stream.
"Thank goodness they thought to preserve the Earth, it's so pretty here."
Yes, we were lucky, they finally allowed people to come back and populate it
after so long.
"But who would have wanted to live here a hundred years ago anyway? Can you
imagine the stench?"
Mother and daughter both laughed at the ridiculous image of the poor former
inhabitants of Earth with their full body suits and gas masks.
We've come a long way. Alondra's mother whispered to herself.
They both drank, Alondra kneeling to cup the crystal clear water in her hands, her
mother pausing to put a dainty hoof in the water.
Suddenly, Alondra caught a glint of metal peeking out from under the silt.
"What's that?" Alondra asked, even as she worked to clear away the mud.
I'm not sure, sweetheart. Be careful of it!
Alondra read, painstakingly,
"In honor of the Animorphs. In commemoration of their sacrifice. 2005."
"What does that mean?"
2005…Oh! Probably something about the Yeerk War, I think…I can't be
sure…
"The Yeerk War? What was that?"
And the wheel turns…