Just a short piece from a setting of mine that I've decided to upload her for you all to read, just give it a look and let me know what you think.

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Goldenrod. That was the colour of the beaches of our homeland, the colour of our skies when the sunset and when the day gave way to the night. It was a near gold that represented how we felt before everything began.

It represented our happiness, it represented the peace that surrounded us. However, now goldenrod meant nothing to us but memories of the time before the horror.

Our skies were black. The beaches ran with tides of crimson from the flesh of the fallen. The colours of our towns had turned to grey. We had been free but now we were shackled.

The nation we call our home, Ivari, rests on the coast between two much larger nations. The first, “our enemy”, is Anatolia to the west. A vast nation that is separated from Ivari by a stretch of water known as the channel sea, they are the invaders.

To our east, bordering us on the land is the Talrey Empire. They went to war with Anatolia, and saw us as a strategic weak point for invading forces. Our government became pressured to aide but constantly refused... Eventually they collapsed.

Tanks rolled down our roads into the capitol. Soldiers rounded up government officials and the lavender flags of Ivari were set ablaze. Our own military wasn't big enough to put up a formal resistance and we were taken by surprise, it all occurred too fast for us.

Already we could all see what was happening. We were not just being invaded by the Talreyans, we were being occupied, we were being turned into a puppet state to aide them in their war against Anatolia. The Anatolians knew this...

Thus the line that would be burned into our memories would come...

“By her goldenrod shores, our voices sing no more.”

Anatolian warships gathered along the coast. Many of us remember the curious faces of the fishermen and dock workers who were the first to notice. Mothers locked their doors, bringing their children down into the basement. News of the Talreyan occupation had yet to spread to the coastal town, but the Anatolian Navy was quite aware and unwilling to let their enemy make use of their new ports.

I remember that day clearly, despite being young. I was only six years of age when it all happened. A few human children ran past me, two boys and a girl, their ages I couldn’t remember, but their mother ushering them to come back inside was clear.

The town wasn’t in panic yet, no one had quit realized what was happening nor what was going to happen to them. Everyone could feel the tension building in the air, they all wanted to hide away from it. It was a bit hot that day, the beginning of summer, sweat gathering in my yellow black spotted fur. I called out for my father ahead of me.

“We’ve been walking all day daddy! Carry me!” I told him. My little legs were tired and we had been doing nothing but wandering the market gathering ingredients, our mother was coming back from a tip next week. He wanted to prepare a special surprise early for her, a cake that she often baked. He had only just learned.

The tall cheetah in front of me sighed and turned, sweeping me up off the ground into his arms.

“Where was all that energy from this morning?”

After that there wasn’t much else. Cracks in the distance, like an approaching storm. The skies were clear of clouds, the seas were calm, but all was not well. The warships had opened fire on us, innocent towns who were non-combatants, unaware that they were even apart of the war now.

I looked up, pointing to the white lines in the sky, trails of smoke from the ship. They had launched rockets at us, I thought they were... Pretty. I was too young to understand. I remember my father silencing me, the screams actually starting as people ran from the docks and dived into buildings. They had no idea that nothing could save them from this.

When the first rocket crashed we were already in motion, running away, my face pressed against his chest where I could hear his heart racing. All I could see was the colours of things moving by. Another rocket, then a third, a fourth... When the fifth rocket struck, I could no longer see those colours moving by us, only a flash of bright orange and black.

My last memories before I finally screamed myself? I was sure my eyes were open, but they were... sticky, wet, I didn’t know at the time but there was blood around them, to me it was just confusion.

The screams had been silenced. There were more impacts in the distance and a weight on top of me, my father who was still clutching me. His heart was out of rhythm, it was slow but loud. The breathes from his mouth were shallow and the words from his mouth were simply.

“I love you.” I’m sure he meant to say more, but there was nothing, just silence.

Our voices sing no more. It refers to all of it, the lives of the people, their routine, everything. Not just their voices, but the screams of chaos in their final moments as the warships fired upon the townspeople, not just in our town, but every town on the coast of Ivari. All of those voices ceased to sing in this world.

But to me? I was blind, not just to the horrors of the world, but in that instant I was blind to the world itself. I couldn’t see its colours, its grace, all of it became distant from me. The voices of the world singing were all I had to remember it all for what it really was in my mind.

So, as I sat there in the mud with the rain pouring down upon me in the hills, a rifle in my hands, I wondered. Was I the only one?

The leaves crunched. Air escaped from the mud as boots pressed down into what was now a swamp. Lungs of a soldier exhaled heavily in the rain. I moved the rifle only a few degrees to my right, tilting it downward and my finger slowly eased towards the trigger.

My sightless eyes closed as I breathed in. I could feel the recoil, but stock of the gun against my shoulder and I felt another moment of peace that would keep me moving. Another who had invaded our goldenrod shores, one who we had been forced into fighting, one who was only following orders to slaughter us. One more had fallen, one more song had ceased to sing.