I've Never Lived on the Moon

Chapter 3: The Brass Passed Off as Gold

Life anywhere in the world was far from desirable. Some places had it worse than others. Nobody was particularly excited to send off postcards with a scenic photo of their homeland to a far away relative. Doing so not only looked like "things are better here, too bad for you", but it was a lie. We were all faking being okay. Heyonmaren looked like paradise on the outside. Even after being freed for going on 50 years, threats from Rovaria were constant. It didn't matter if they were no longer a territory, Rovaria still had the upper hand. War was declared on the peaceful country. The Heyonmarese people always tried to seek alternatives. It worked for the time being, but they lived in fear of an illegal air strike. It would go against many treaties and laws, but Rovaria was not a law abiding country. This posed a life changing dilemma for some Heyonmarese individuals. Do they stay and risk being killed, or do they leave behind their entire lives? Most stayed and hoped it wouldn't get worse. Others, the more adventurous ones with no stakes to lose, traveled to Chesterington, Terriana, or Slvania. God help the ones that chose Chesterington...

Celestine was equally normal and an anomaly. He had nothing at home to stay for. His family broke apart and went their own ways. Unlike many Heyonmarese families, they couldn't agree on what to do. His parents went northwest to Slvania. His siblings stayed behind. Celestine was dead set on Chesterington. He went west, young and innocent. He could have gone anywhere in the world, somewhere safer. The Chester nations were quiet and unassuming. He came with intentions of helping the less fortunate, as we've already learned. He was a nurse at home, so his skills came in handy treating the sick and injured. His job in a Chickford hospital sufficed for several years. He was happy as a lark tending to people with every disease from pink eye to gout to the plague. It was more than sad and unfortunate that he decided his help was needed in the one place he was told to avoid. Why was he so ignorant? His kindness got the better of him. His overwhelming desire to do something far above his abilities outweighed any fear of losing his life. A group of nurses went to Rovaria. Celestine was the only one that survived. The Rovarian guards took a liking to him.

If it doesn't seem to fit with Celestine's character from the way I met him at the infirmary, there's a good explanation. He hadn't been a nurse in a long time. Those duties ended when he got to Rovaria. Most of his time there was either in captivity or on the battlefield. He tried to treat wounded soldiers in medical tents, but he had other duties to fulfill. They wanted him out there with his gun instead. Terrian soldiers took care of the wounded. Their healing abilities were well sought after. Celestine didn't have the special spit, so he was banished to the front lines. He complained about it, angry after the fact for how he was treated. He was a damn good nurse, and they needed all the help they could get. Somebody to at least dress wounds or administer drugs. It wouldn't have almost cost him his life being off to the side somewhere in a medical tent. The only downside would be serving longer. He may have still been out there. He admitted he was much happier being in the quiet with me. It went against his training to hurt anyone with a weapon. Neither of us saw the Rovarian soldiers as people though. They were something else, but not indestructible. We knew they were a special breed, something made by the Rovarian army. These soldiers were not people with beating hearts. But they could be stopped with guns and grenades. Nobody told us the truth, what exactly we were fighting against. We had our theories though. At first we believed they were robots. Rovaria was known for its automatons. However, all the clock makers and people who specialised in gears or things of that nature were killed. Anyone with artistic merits was rounded up long ago. Another theory was that the soldiers were reanimated corpses, and with the news of the disease going around, that became a popular belief. It also made sense that Rovaria wanted to spread something more deadly. In no time it would be traced back to their army, no doubt.

Celestine and I paid close attention to the news cycles. It was the same stories repeated and it only made our blood run cold. The Rovarian army was about to do nuclear tests near Terriana. Not only would it probably kill people living on Isle of Bridge or nearby, but it was going to cut off all contact between Chesterington and Terriana. Slvania and neighbouring countries would likely be effected too. We relied on information from Terriana because they had the most accurate news. Heyonmaren was on the verge of being captured as a territory again. Georic Vaul was set to meet with Eadwulf any day now. Everyone knew Georic was only doing it to poison Eadwulf. If we had any hope, it was that the Terrian king would fight back. So far he was defending his country with the Terrian army on the coast. They were out in the Blacklin Sea. It was truly a world war now, involving everyone available. This war had been going on for almost a full century by this point. It started in the 1850s. There was no one left in Rovaria to torture so it left the Rovarian borders. The moment Georic took control, everything went to hell. The understatement of the century, perhaps. Back when it began, Georic gassed his citizens and set up murder camps. He rounded up people every day. There was a rescue mission in the 1860s and it carried on until there was literally no one left to save. Very few got lucky in the sense they were taken out of there, but the effects of Georic's presence was already taking its toll. The people were sick, coughing up blood and bleeding from their eyeballs. They were starved. It was a miracle anyone survived at all. By the time Celestine and I got there, there was hardly a country left to recover. By then, we were just fighting to take Georic down. And we realised it was impossible.