MIA
I tilted my head to the right and squinted just enough to see nothing but the top of my gun. I shifted all my weight to my left foot, hoping against hope that this time, please let it be this time, I get to shoot exactly on the centre of the target.
I let my forefinger touch the trigger for just a second. The whole gun felt cold against my hands, but the trigger felt strangely hot like I had been pressing on it all day long. I wasn't. This is just the third time I've touched it today.
I held my breath as I positioned my forefinger on top of the trigger, careful not to touch it yet, but exactly on the place where I watched my instructor put it for the past month.
"Fire, Mia. Fire!"
I pressed it all too quickly, and I know I screwed it. Again. For the millionth time.
"What was that?!" He huffed, patches of red appearing on his pallid face. I know my bullet can't be good, judging by the reaction on his face like I sank the bullet on his leg, not on the target. And sure enough, when I looked over the human-outlined wooden target board, there wasn't even a chink on its sides. I scanned the room for the destination of my bullet and I saw it, the floor a little over the target boards had a small crater that announced the landing of my misaimed ammunition. I grimaced.
"Sorry." I said quietly, scratching the back of my neck out of habit.
Ely tried to correct his frantic breathing. I can tell that he's trying hard not to implode and strangle me right now, but to no success. He turned his back from me for a few minutes before speaking in his low, calculated voice again. "Mia." He said, but by his tone I could tell he's chiding me. My head bowed lower, in shame. "I don't know what to do with you."
"Ely, I'm trying!" I know I sound like a child pleading now, but I couldn't help it because he sounded like he's about to give up on me.
Eleazar is just two years older than me, he's twenty, but he's the best shooter around. He could practically shoot five moving birds with a bullet, and blast somebody's spleen with a pistol. And I am his lame tutee for the last four weeks. I could just make out his frustration for being stuck with me instead of fighting among the troops rebelling against the current government.
"I know, Mia. I know that." His voice softened, like he was talking to the little girl I am. He crouched a little so his nose aligns with mine. "And I know you don't like this either. But you have to, you understand that, right?"
I sighed and slouched down the nearest dustless spot on the floor. It's true that I understand why I have to do this. To protect myself, like my father had told me. The whole rebellion is under a war against the government for the length of almost my whole life now, and we are nearing a time where both sides are running out of resources, meaning the end of the war. I would have been glad to see the end of fifteen years of bloodbath and the rise of humanity to a new, and hopefully, a lasting peaceful age. But I can't, because it means the obliteration of either the tyrannical government that happens to be run by my Uncle and cousins, or me and the people around me. Because I am my father's daughter. And he is the leader of the rebels. And I believe in their beliefs, too, that dictatorships should be overthrown.
When I was little, I used to think it was just a silly sibling fight, like the one that transpired between Celine and me. But as the years gone by and I start to see the ruins of the war, the orphans, the homeless and the mass graves of the innocent, the helpless caught in between two rubbing forces, I know it's no sibling rivalry. It was a deep-seated loathe between people in power whose veins run the same blood, kindled with opposing values and views of the world, all eyes blinded, all ears closed from the wail of the dying.
