CLARKE:
There's something to be said for life inside a prison cell. The only thing to fear is the solitude, the time spent alone in your own mind. I felt like that sometimes, locked away with only my thoughts to keep me company. I would sit for hours thinking about friends I no longer saw, my mother who was only allowed to visit on rare occasions and also the death of my father.
The only thing to keep my sanity was the sketches I made upon the walls of my cell. These pictures I'd seen in old books allowed my mind to find a healthy distraction. I longed to be free, to walk the corridors of The Ark, no longer trapped inside these walls, inside the dark thoughts of my mind. But it was true to say The Ark itself sometimes felt like one huge prison and that prison was running out of air and dying.
I'll never forget the day they came for me. My cell door opening as The Ark's Guards dragged me out of it. Confusion and fear filled my head. What was this? Were they here to take me to my death? It was seeing my mothers face that filled me with hope. I barely registered her words in the confusion. I was to be sent to the ground, back to Earth? How was this possible? Before I could even ask why, I felt the sharp sting of something on my flesh and then only darkeness.
The last place I expected to wake was on one of The Arks dropships, burning through the heavens. It shook and rattled, filling me with a sense of dread. All of us there felt it to some degree. Some cried, some stayed silent, some masked it with humour, but you could see it in their eyes.
One hundred of us descending through space to a world we were strangers to. An uncertain future awaited. Would death greet us? Could we survive? The ground. That's the dream. Only time will tell.
LEXA:
Leaders always have a responsibly to put the lives of their people before their own. This is the way of The Commander and its a lesson I have to remind myself of time and time again. This selflessness is a sacrifice and I bear each day.
Standing on the balcony of my throne room in Polis, I looked out across the land. The day had been spent discussing the matter of The Mountain Men with the clan ambassadors. This enemy of our people had plagued us for decades, abducting our kin, turning them into monsters, massacring our loved ones. Their threat to wipe us out with their bombs if we retaliated, filled me with fury.
The clans looked to me for a solution. We fight with, swords, spears and arrows, no match for bullets and bombs. Even with the fragile unity of our people under this new coalition, our strength seemed limited at times.
As I stood looking up to the sky, light rain began to fall. I found it refreshing upon my face and for a moment my mind felt clear and uncomplicated. But these moments of calm never last long. In the distance a flash of light appeared as a trail of fire blazed across the sky. My heart skipped a beat, my senses became alert. It wasn't a missile from Mount Weather, it was something I'd only heard stories of. These tales of when men fall from the sky were almost mythical, taken from the time of The First Commander, Becca Pramheda. We called them Skaikru and such things as this were always viewed with extreme suspicion. I turned to my guards and without hesitation uttered only two words, "Send riders!" They immediately acted on my orders.
I continued to stand there in the rain, never knowing what lay beyond the horizion, what or who had crashed into this world? If the stories were true, what impact this meeting of two worlds would have on our lives?
In the blink of an eye everything changed that day. Even as Commander I wasn't sure I was ready for what that falling star would bring into my life.
