Ocean's War

[Katebush]

Innocence

Ocean moved amongst the tents, the moon high and the long night half over. All around the volunteers and adventurers who had decided to watch the night through huddled around fires or stood gazing from the hills towards the north. She paused at one tent, two children cuddled together under a thin blanket. No adults. She remembered them from the storytelling earlier. Julian and Gabrielle. Their parents missing, presumed dead in the coup in the city. They lay, arm in arm, sleeping peacefully, no lines marring their perfect faces.

She sighed and moved on. Those two only needed her in the day, when the cold reality of the camp loomed over the lives they remembered. Others would need her now, in the dark hours, when the nightmares came. She was so tired. She tried to work out when she had last slept, but lost count, days seeming meaningless without tides or market days to tie them to. More than a tenday, less than a month. She cursed herself. It wasn’t as if the reason she couldn’t sleep even had anything to do with this stupid war, and here she was feeling sorry for herself again when there were children in need of her. She knew that the Magistrate had not intended her to do this relentlessly, endlessly, looking after the children, caring for them feeding them cuddling them to sleep when the dark times came. She knew he had paid her and Lilly to entertain them for a day, no more. But she needed something to do. Something to keep her moving, keep her busy, stop her thinking and dreading and hurting.

So she worked, day and night to look after the one thing she knew was most in need of the care. Cities rose and fell. She had seen it in other places, though not so close and personal. A life travelling the worlds seas leant you a long view of history that land dwellers tended to miss, trying to cling to the permanence of the land they tilled and the walls they lived behind. Ocean knew better, the Queen knew that nothing was permanent, nothing lasted forever. Men and women died. Nations fell apart. Only one thing mattered, the future. And these children were the future of Peltarch.

So many of the people of the camp were nice to the children, gave them gifts, played and sang for them on occasion. Ocean knew they cared, but they cared for each child because children represented something to them. Children represented how things should be and not how the warriors and adventurers knew them to truly be.
The others helped and cared in their own way because of the innocence of the children. Because by helping to keep the children safe they felt they made the world better, provided it with an innocence it didn’t truly have. Ocean knew better. Oh the children were not old, war weary, jaded. They were not battle hardened, hard-hearted and resistant to pain. If that was what you called innocence then yes, that was what they were. But these children had seen things no innocent could see and remain unchanged. Had lost family, friends. Seen people cut down by mercenaries, only feet from their watching gaze, before they had fled south with the fleeing crowds.

The first casualty of war is innocence. Someone had said that sometime. Or maybe they hadn’t. Thinking straight was becoming harder. Ocean moved a few tents over where Lyrian, a girl of only four was curled up alone around a doll Ocean had found her somewhere. Lyrian’s mother had died in her sight, her father was missing. The girl was whimpering again her eyes half open and with a sigh ocean crawled into the tent and curled around her. She usually spent a half hour or so in this tent each night. Lyrian had refused to sleep with the other children who often huddled in tents in groups of three or four.

The soldiers and fighters were wrong. They were not protecting the innocence of these children. It was too late for that. But let them think they were, it hurt no-one. It made the children smile for a few minutes. These children had lost their innocence when Peltarch burnt. Ocean sighed into the darkness. That wasn’t what she was doing. To protect the innocence of these children you’d need to have stopped the war before it started. War had shattered the innocence. So now her work began. Not to protect the innocence of children that lay in bed crying at night, or woke screaming from nightmares of their loved ones being killed. Instead she worked for the future.
In order to ensure that Peltarch had a future, City gone or not, she had to prevent one thing. In the shattering of innocence, in a child’s mind, with soldiers all around, someone had to show these children that hating was not the answer. Hating was easy. Warriors and wizards and bards and soldiers walked past the children day and night talking of battle plans of logistics of how many dead and how many wounded.
To these children the dead were still people, the wounded were loved ones, the weapons the soldiers wielded meaningless. These children did not need to see Koreth defeated. They did not need their city back. They needed a hearth, a home, a place where when they got there they knew they were with people who loved them for who they were, no matter what.

Ocean sighed again and slowly peeled herself away from Lyrian, who now slept deeply. Not quite yet 18 and mother to more orphans and lost souls than her ship could hold. She walked on, exchanging smiles with a few of the defenders. Good people. Well, mostly. Good people doing what they thought was right. Fighting the tyranny of the coup. Some for the principal, some for the wealth lost to them, some because they were well and truly pissed off at having been beaten in the first place. Men not used to losing. All fighting in their own way for their own reasons. She could not argue or disagree with any of them. She had felt anger, wanted revenge, desired wealth and prosperity. Would she be human had she not? But all that consumed her now was tiredness. Tiredness and the need to ensure that no matter what happened, Peltarchs future would be built on the knowledge that love was more important than hate or revenge. She could not return these children to their innocent state, any more than she could turn back the clock and changed what had happened between her and Drelan. But she could and would do her best to make sure that these children grew up to be farmers and tailors and painters and singers of stupid songs and lovers and dreamers. She could do her best to show them that the world could be a place they could sleep in without fear and without nightmares. And maybe if she succeeded she could sleep and her own nightmares would end.