Forever Young

"Imagine a world full of garbage. Humans walking around, their mere existence destroying the land they live on." Chief Grayden was saying. "Then, look at Zanziquard. Flawless beauty, people, land. I mean, would you want to live there? There, where those oblivious creatures don't even know that beings of higher intelligence exist? We may be at war with Grigorise, but that doesn't mean we must escape our homeland to live there!"

He had a point. Ever since the war began, Fremonts, creatures that live on Zanziquard, a planet, have been escaping to Earth, disguised as humans. The thing is, their disguise was wearing down by the second as the planet didn't have the nutrition they needed. Our numbers have been diminishing as people here go to check upon the family members they haven't heard since. No longer are we the Universe's most blooming planet as we were before.

And then there's Grigorise, the enemy planet. Their Master is who started this war with Chief Grayden because some Excotif from the planet Dethen chose Chief to marry instead of the Master Hast. Some feud over love, right? Wrong. Master Hast and Chief Grayden are brothers. Or, at least, used to be. After King Fremont died, he left all of his wealth and power to Chief. This angered Master Hast to the point of fleeing to a new planet and starting life anew. The wealth and power has not gone to Chief's head though. Instead, he became even nicer than he was as a prince. He refused to be called a King, because he deemed that to be too powerful a title.

And now, sitting next to my best friend, I realize how horrible some lives can be, after you look past the title. My best friend is an immigrant from the planet Grigorise, and everywhere he goes he is regarded with the most horrid glares. I have no idea how he can stand it. We met at the Immigration Building. His parents were moving to my homeland and I was visiting my mother, who was the agent designated to them. My mom told me to play with him so that "the grown-ups can talk". His parents weren't going to be accepted if it weren't for the bond he and I had as friends. They just didn't look promising, but this was interplanetary immigration, it had to be at one planet or another. That night, mother had come home with creases on her forehead. I asked her what's wrong and she told me that Carter couldn't stay in Zanziquard. But when she saw tears welling up in my eyes, she quickly added the word "maybe" to the end, as if it would make it all better. The next day, I went to see her again, hoping my new friend would be there too. Carter was there in fact, but this time, he was sitting next to his parents with a sad look on his face. It was so desolate that right then and there, I vowed that I would never let an expression like that to ever cross his face again. Thankfully, when my mom broke the news that they could stay, let's just say that Carter and his parents weren't the only ones hopping up and down!

The flashback dissolves from my mind and I return to Chief Grayden's speech. In my peripheral vision, I see Carter looking at me with an eyebrow raised. I shrug and pretend to play with my hair. Finally, the speech is over and Carter and I head down to watch the last of the autumn birds fly away. He bought us some bird feed and handed me a fistful. I sat down on the floating bench and opened my hands. The B.I.R.D.s (Breathing Interactive Radioactive Devices) that would be dangerous on the Earth plane, serve as mere domestic pets here on Zanziquard, come to eat from my hand. Another piece of evidence that we are technologically more advanced than them. I can feel Carter's eye's on my face as I'm tickled by the mouths of these creatures.

"Iyana, I want to say something…" Carter starts, but never gets to finish. Right then a soldier sporting the Grigorise insignia picks him up and completely vanishes. Sobbing, I go back to where the speech was held what felt like ages ago. I look up and see that everyone who was there before had also vanished. There wasn't a single soul left on Zanziquard. With tears in my eyes, I fall to my knees and I realize: I have to fight and win the imminent war all on my own. Mustering as much of the courage I possibly can, I rise to my feet and that's when I see their planes start landing. I'm filled with some kind of hope, I'm not sure where it's coming from but it feels warm and giddy. Soldiers popping up everywhere, soldiers with the red insignia, the sign of fire. Grigorise actually means "Fire" in Fermontian. By the second, I'm being surrounded by those of the flaming nation.

Clearing my mind, I try to focus on those mandatory fighting summer camps we had to attend as children. Gertrude, my coach, had told me to always keep my eyes and mind on what my opponent was doing. Of course, in those lessons no one really mentioned anything about "What if the whole population of Zanziquard goes POOF and I have to fight against a frikken army?"

Suddenly, I see my hands glow white and when I lifted them, I felt the air change. I moved my hands again and the air moved with it. Then the glow faded in and out and flickered out. Then I felt a burning on my elbows. Now what? I thought. When I looked -which was hard, trust me- I saw a candlelight sized flame right at each tip. I slowly watched that die out as well. Same thing applies to when the ground started to tremble beneath my feet. Out of nowhere, a stick appeared at my hands, and when I held that stick, I knew exactly what I had to do. I stomped it to the ground and the ground it hit split in two and was engulfed by water. With my hands I levitated myself onto a cloud and made the air whisk me off to a high mountain, where I lit some fire and quietly dozed off…

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I wake up to the sound of tanks getting stuck in the mud that was left behind when my sea was absorbed into Zanziquard's famous-for sand. I realize I had been asleep for the entire night. I get up, and brushing myself off, I step out of the cave for a bit of fresh air and the first thing I see is a missile being shot at me. Quickly, I dodge and jump off the cliff. I will for the tree closest to me to grow a bit more and a branch serves as a swinging vine. I jump off and land on a tree, bustling my way down to the ground where I land with an "Oof!"

On one of the low branches I see a bottle poking out. Inside the bottle are the notes Carter and I used to pass across a puddle one day after it had rained hard.

"You're pretty!" one of them wrote in his loopy handwriting.

"Don't forget to miss me!" I remember writing that one. He was going to go visit his family on Grigorise for a weekend.

"You are the strongest water girl I know! Remember that!" He called me water girl because I wanted to be a mermaid when I grew up.

"Don't let your fire burn out!" I had written back. He was strangely obsessed with fire back then.

Then I found one that didn't look old and I hadn't read it before. It seemed like his present day handwriting. "I couldn't finish my sentence yesterday… I love you, Iyana! I always have, I always will. –C"

He was watching me? Impossible. He wasn't even here! Had he been here, knowing him, the first thing he'd do was look for me and protect me.

Just as I'd suspected, my sea had completely been absorbed and I had left my stick in the mountain that just blew up. Remembering the pattern from yesterday, I stomp my foot and a huge wall builds itself around the enemies.

"Not bad," I think to myself. "But what could have given me this power?"

Suddenly a huge noise explodes my eardrums and dust, fire and chunks of brick send me flying backwards into a tree. When I try standing, pain sears up my left leg and up to my hip and I realized I've hurt something. Bad. I'm bruised and burned everywhere and I am tired. I just want to lay down and sleep. Or maybe wake up to the real world where this is only a dream. I shake those thoughts out of my mind. I mean, literally, the whole world is depending on me. If I don't succeed here, Zanziquard will collapse. I rip a branch from the tree I just crashed into and hit it on the ground. It had the same effect as the last one; water came out of where I hit it. I break a smaller piece and hold it up against my left knee. With some water and some earth, I create clay to hold the stick in place. Using some air, I dry it and test it out. Seems okay. Not the sweetest berry on the bush, but it'll do.

My stomach grumbles at the thought of berry bushes. Carter and I used to have our special bush nearby. Maybe I could find it? I set out in search, hoping a miracle would happen and it would be where we left it all those years ago. But what I found was a dead pile of dried leaves and twigs. Not a berry in sight. Sighing, I made my way back to the battlegrounds.

Too late. One of the tanks was completely free of my wall and was coming straight at me, knocking down everything in its path. It fired, and panicking, I brought my hands up. The power of the sudden move of my hands sent a wind so strong it literally changed the ten-ton bullet's direction and had it explode five miles away. Apparently, that was the maximum peak of my air powers, but not the last of the enemy's fire. Loading up aforementioned tank again, I saw one of the men on the tank looking at me with a face full of pity. His thoughts were indubitably about how young I was, and how I shouldn't be fighting this war alone. I watched with confusion as he was reluctant to pull the lever to fire at me. He licked his chapped and dry lips and I realized that they've been torturing their soldiers. Without hesitancy, I motioned for the older man to cup his hands as I hit my stick to the ground and made water spew out the top and create an arc to Mr. Warrior's hands. He smiled at me in thanks and brought his hands to his lips, ready to drink when his partner came out of the technical chamber and knocked the water out of the poor man's hands. I could hear him shout at the guy, which infuriated me. I pumped my elbow backwards and the fire went over me and onto the yelling man's shoulder. Not too much, but enough to distract him for as long as it took to get the poor man out of the horrid situation. Much like I did before, I again levitated myself onto a cloud, but this time I grabbed onto the civil man, leaving the barbaric one to burn with his tank. Hey, I was supposed to destroy them anyway, right?

I willed the cloud to take us up high, where they couldn't get to us. I asked the man his name.

"My name's Carter." He said. "I once had a friend that looked exactly like you. Her name was Iyana. I knew for sure you would be just like her, so sweet and kind, even to strangers that were trying to kill you. You know, she was a master in archery. Do you like archery, my child?"

Forcing back tears, I nodded. "I do, sir."

This was way too confusing. What had just happened? I noticed a bit of dirt on his suit. Picking it up, I held it in my hand and hit my stick into my hand to make water for Carter. He slurped it all up and thanked me profusely.

"So, what's your name, kid?" he asks me.

"My name… Is Iyana. Iyana Goldverich." I reply.
His brows furrow in confusion. "How's that possible? You were dead ages ago!"

"No. Do you remember that day when we had just listened to Chief Grayden's speech and then we went to feed the B.I.R.D.s?"

"The day I told you I loved you and you rejected me? How can I forget?"

"That's not what happened. That was just yesterday. The whole population of Zanziquard vanished. All except for me. And they took you before you finished your sentence! I have proof!" I led the cloud to the bottle of notes and pulled the most recent one out. I watched scrutinisingly as he read and re-read the tiny paper.

"So which one of us is crazy?" he asked, rather nonchalantly. It made us both burst into laughter and the more he laughed, I noticed with a shock, the younger he looked. I told him things from our childhood that made him crack up some more, and soon he was just like he was yesterday.

"Say, did they give you anything while you were with them? Like a pill or anything?" I asked, wanting to get to the bottom of things.

"Sure, they gave us a pain-reliever every night. We never thought it was weird because every night we were in pain."

Hmm… Could it have been those pain-killers that made him look so old and switched his memory around? I shook my head furiously. That wasn't the task at hand. I had to win this darn war once and for all! And now with Carter by my side, we were indestructible. I took his hand in mine and entwined our fingers, all while passively pushing an incoming missile away with air. Resting my head on his shoulder, sitting on that cloud with all kinds of fire being thrown at us, I think, "We'll get things back to normal."

THE END