Pebbles: A Collection of Short Stories

The Burden of the Overlooked

I grew up in the shadow of a relic. Many of us did. They were little more than a monument to a generation that had been lost so long ago that the scars no longer bled. At least, I thought that was the case. I lived on the edge of nowhere, which isolated me from the turmoil spreading like wildfire through the cities. Then one evening, as the sunset on our tiny cottage, they came for my brother, Niko.

"Take me," my father begged, but he was too old to interest the soldiers.

My nana sat glass-eyed in her rocking chair as my parent pleaded for my brother's safety.

"He's just a boy," my mother cried.

"He's fifteen, that is of age." The soldier's words were curt and void of any empathy, but they still flared within me.

The First City was coming for the sons; even in our distant barren village, the war was at our doorstep, and my brother was gone. I was seventeen and only spared because I was female.

The faces of my parents twisted in agony. I should have heard their screams, but something was turning. The creak was calling to me, pulling me. The wheel that I had lived beneath for as long as I could remember beckoned me. It wasn't moving. Rationally, I knew it could no longer turn, but when I drew near, when the flesh of my hand connected with the flaking metal, it engulfed me.

Flashes that didn't connect filled my mind at first and then the red sky. I had heard the stories of the war. The chemical bombs filled the sky with red smoke. The survivors would call it the blood sky. But I couldn't be witnessing a blood sky; that was years ago.

A shriek pulled my eyes to the ground where a young woman was deftly wielding a sword against countless approaching phasers. I blinked at the sight; no sword could withstand the energy blast of a phaser. The battle engulfed me. There was one lone woman defending her life with a passion and fury of an entire army. But she stumbled as a blast sliced into her cheek.

"No," roared in my ears before I realized it was coming from me.

But in a flash, I was back in my muted yard.

"You have been called." My grandmother's voice was hollow. "I'm sorry, my child, but you will need this."

In her aged state, she could barely lift the sword she had once yielded so deftly.

"Greatness is the burden of the overlooked," she offered as I took the weapon while my eyes clung to the scar on her cheek.

The First City came for the sons. It was up to the daughters to fight for them.