My Soldier

Chapter 1

"Daddy, daddy, look!"

I ran into our large living room holding a homemade sword that I had just made out of some nearby sticks and string. When my father saw me in front of him he took the small wooden sword from my hands and looked down at me with a huge smile on his face.

"Well what did you make today (Y/N)?"

"It's a sword! I made it look just like the one that you have, see!"

I quickly pointed to the sword that was hanging on the wall over our lit fireplace. He glanced down at the small bundle of sticks and string in his hands and laughed proudly.

"It looks great sweetie. Maybe one day you can have a real one just like m-"

My mother quickly made her way into the room, holding fabric for a new dress, cutting him off, "No George! Don't you dare tell our daughter that she can have a sword. You know as well as I do that she is going to grow up to be a kind, gentle, and beautiful young lady. She's not going to grow up and act rough and dirty like a boy."

I stared at her and spoke up, "Uh...I'm only seven mommy. I don't need to worry about being a proper lady right now. I wanna be like daddy, I wanna be a soldier!"

She gracefully made her way over to where I was standing and knelt down in front of me with a kind smile, "(Y/N), sweetie, you cannot become a soldier like your father. Women are not meant to fight in wars. We have to stay home and let the men do the fighting. So you need to start learning what your role in society is now. No more of this soldier stuff."

I sighed as I lowered my head, "Okay mommy."

I looked back up to my dad and trudged myself over to him. I took the homemade sword away from his hands and when I looked into his eyes I could see the touch of sadness he felt. He could tell that I wanted to be different than every other girl in this world. When I turned back around I was greeted by my mother again. She held her hand out in front of her and looked down at the homemade stick sword. I sighed once again and placed the small sword in her hand.

She lightly smiled then gave me a tight hug and whispered into my ear. "I know it's hard to give up a dream like that, but I swear to you that it'll get easier as time goes on."

I nodded my head and turned my head upwards to look at her, "I know it will mommy. I'm just going to go upstairs and read a few of my books."

She nodded her head and went off to do whatever she needed or wanted to do. So I walked off and went upstairs to my bedroom. It was no shock that I stayed in my room most of the time, I usually stayed in my bedroom for hours a day. I didn't want to go downstairs and be told that I wasn't able to do something that I thought was fun. I would usually make excuses and tell them that I was practicing my writing or reading a book, when in reality I was day dreaming about my future.

While I was in my room I looked through my bookshelf for a book or two to read to pass some time. I couldn't find anything interesting because I had already read all of the books available on my shelf and I wasn't going to bore myself by rereading any of those books again. So I did the next best thing, I went down the hall into my dad's office to see what books he had. I would've looked in their bedroom but I didn't because Mom had a bunch of etiquette books sitting on the shelf, and she had so many that father's books wouldn't fit. Her etiquette books were the last thing I wanted to read so I took a look somewhere else.

As I went through my father's shelves I found his stash of books. His books were much more interesting than my mother's. There were multiple books on battle strategies, swords, guns, fighting, our military and history as a country. I grabbed as many books as my small arms could carry. Then ran as fast as I could back into my room.