Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia.
Drabble Prompt: Character (Netherlands) with Theme (Dreams)
Summary: the Netherlands has always had dreams - of war, of peace, of life, of love. And of course, of the future.
Title: Nature's Gratuities
It takes a lot of courage to dream. To open one's self to a barrage of random access memories, visions, and thoughts you never thought you'd have, or ever could have imagined.
Never thought of it that way? That's fine by me - I never used to see it that way either. When I was younger, I saw dreaming as a useful little gratuity Nature had tagged onto the human consciousness, a little something to make sleep more enjoyable.
But of course, Nature doesn't give us gifts. We earn everything we have from her - we share in her seemingly endless wealth - and in exchange she takes away just as much. Our loves, our people, our sanity - this is the trade-off, or at least will be, some time in the future. Fair trade, I suppose, for existing in the state we do.
We live in the strangest ways that we can, to try and forget, to try and drain every drop worth having out of life until the end comes. Like how France always has to be the over-the-top lover-of-all, like how Spain and Belgium fixate on tomatoes and chocolate as if it's the last thing they'll ever see. Like all of our passions are amplified somehow, exaggerated beyond reality. As if that'll make it somehow worth all the sadness we see, as if the money I earn somehow pays off bearing our national burdens.
We surround ourselves in the frivolous, to forget for a little while our eventual purpose.
Only a few of us yet have paid Mother Nature in sanity. But at some point, when all we stand for - all we have left is gone, I wonder if we'll all end up writing her one mass check.
The truth is? It doesn't always start with the first human wars we fight.
The sheer weight of the bad memories will always be enough.