Remember to Forget

"Mommy! Please, come back!"

"Daddy wait! Don't go! No! Don't go daddy, please!"

Kieran watched from her father's side the gruesome play laid out before her tender young eyes. Lord Vega, standing like a tower placed his right arm around her, as if trying to protect her, yet leaving her eyes open to the fiasco.

Parents were being torn away from their children by the knights of Vega. The town was a valley of ashes, houses stomped to the ground unwillingly, fire laughing as it danced and threw smoke in the gloomy skies. The knights, in their dented armor and their helms long disposed of. Their hands were calloused from their swords and arrows, from their charred faces screamed tired and melancholy eyes, curtained by the call of duty and honor, and the shedding apathy floating with the smoke into oblivion. The townspeople looked no better. Their clothing, poorly sewn together bits of fabric found here and thither. Their faces were just as smoldered as the night.

Grabbing one mother from her young daughter, one knight pushed her face into the straw; another pulled the child from the straw heap and turned her away. Another child, a son, was torn from his father's hands, telling his son to be strong. The son, hearing this, didn't struggle, but stood holding a teddy bear in one hand, wiping the tears from his face with his one long sleeve with the other.

"Be strong. Be strong like daddy, ok? If daddy is strong, then you have to be strong ok?" he said as a knight started to pull him away, all the while his voice getting louder as he was pulled farther away to the straw heap. This caught Kieran's attention.

"Father," she said, "What is happening?"

"This is war, my child. These lowly demons did us wrong, and so, an eye for an eye," he answered in a low, fear instilling voice. Kieran bared an apathetic appearance as she continued to listen, her eyes fixated on the young boy, around her age.

"But daddy, I can't be strong! I don't want you to go!" screamed the boy, his red hair bouncing up and down as he flailed his arms. He ran to his father, "Don't leave me here alone!" The knight pulled away as the boy jumped into his fathers arms and buried his face.

"Don't cry, strong men don't cry ok? Listen," he looked his son in the face; from the child's bloodshot eyes peered emeralds, "Daddy is going to have to be strong now, ok? Daddy needs you to be strong, too. Be strong for daddy. Say it, I am strong."

Immediately the child started to say it again and again and again.

The knight took the father on his shoulder and made him walk again. He let the boy out of his grasp. "Daddy has to go now. Daddy has to be strong. Daddy loves you!" he said as a single tear fell from his face. The young boy shook his head as he now chanted 'no'. The father kept repeating he loved his son, and he was pushed into the straw heap as well. He raised his head from the straw, and looked at his son, standing alone.

"Never forget who you are. You are my son, and I love you," he said loudly.

A black mage appeared and lifted his right hand as fire emitted from his palm. He walked towards the straw heap. "Lee-in-berg. Lee-in-gara-na-ko-in-berg!." He threw his hand downward upon the straw, as the flames danced across the heap.

"You are my son, Mitsume Mazikeen Kelpie, and I love you," he said, looking at his son with tired eyes. The flames began to hug his body, and he went without a cry. The heap was swallowed by fire and screams of pain.

Clearly the child wanted to cry, but he couldn't. He was being strong for his father. And so, he stood there, watching his father's flesh singe off of his skeleton. He turned his head to meet an unexpected gaze, a gaze of no sympathy, rather of apathy, and coldness.

"Come, my child," her father said as she looked up momentarily into his old red eyes. "We shall leave for home. The night fayes are among us." Kieran looked back at Mitsume.

He looked into Kieran's eyes underneath her thin black hair and her silver tiara, never knowing he would see those eyes again, in a different light.

note: Kieran's first name is pronounced as follows:

Kăē-run

It translates into 'little dark one'. Ironic, ne? mwaha