Chapter 14: Hope and Humanity

The dawn morning brought a new day, and its own share of troubles. Having their homes flattened by the previous night’s battle, they ended up huddled together in the only house still standing in the village, the former village chief’s mansion. The only family who had his own home was Hunter Gen but nobody thought it was right or convenient to cram so many heads into a house barely large enough for his family..

“It’s gone!”

The scream jolted Aina awake. Her heart stuttered before it steadied, still tender from yesterday’s chaos.

“It’s all gone!” the voice cried again, hoarse with despair.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to eat now?”

Groggy, Aina pushed herself up, her joints aching from the hard floor. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Her son Irek was already awake. He pressed a warm corn pancake into her hand, another into each of his siblings’. “Mother, please eat this.”

Varn rubbed his eyes, sniffing. “What happened?”

Irek’s voice was grim. “It’s bad. Because of the fight yesterday, all our grain stores are ruined. The fine grains are mixed with dirt and ash. Most of it is gone entirely. Even what little I found in our kitchen won’t last us a single day.”

Murmurs spread quickly through the crowded house. Fear sharpened into desperation. Aina felt the weight of it pressing on her chest. Hunger was worse than monsters. Hunger gnawed at reason, and starvation eroded dignity. She had seen a lot of such mental illnesses in disaster areas in her past life.

Despite such hardships, not everyone descended into madness and evil. Aina wanted to believe that the people she had met in this world were at least partway decent. She hated treachery and backbiting in corporate circles, but at least those attempted to stay civil, with the law looming over them all the time. If she were to be stabbed in the back now, there would be no law that would give her justice.

After all, nobody would come this far to the boonies to administer justice.

Aina walked out of the house without a word. She thought she could at least enjoy the morning sun, but what greeted her beyond the gate of the village chief’s manor were two men. If Aina wasn’t mistaken, they were two brothers, each with their own families. There were actually three brothers, but the third brother, a rich merchant, was selfish and refused to share his food, so he left on his own.

“First, you can’t do this!” One of the men held the other from behind, stopping him from going further.

“Why can’t I? They destroyed my food! The food meant for my children! Are they going to starve now?” The man argued, a knife in his right hand.

“But this is not right! Return to your senses brother!”

“They are already dead! It’s not that they will need it. They should pay for what they did with their bodies!”

“Stop this!” Old Man Jine appeared, slapping the man holding a knife.

Aina was afraid the crazed man would retaliate, to stab the knife into Old Man Jine. But instead, he stood there stunned. His hold on the knife was still firm, but his hand slowly lowered.

“I picked you brothers up when your father died. I know you are not this person holding a knife, trying to cut up a corpse! Your brother Bon embarrassed me when he cut ties with you brothers in public. But that was his choice. Do you want people to make fun of me until the day I die? Do you want people to call me the man who raised a corpse-eater? What kind of face do you want me to show in front of your parents?!”

The man slumped, his hands became loose. The clatter of his knife could be heard so clearly by Aina in the stillness of dawn. So too did the sound of his sobs.

“You are like a son to me,” Old Man Jine said, his voice cracking, “I have done a lot of bad things in my life, things I greatly regret. Raising you brothers made me feel human again. No matter what, remember, we are human. Regardless of adversity,” Old Man Jine patted the chest of the first brother, “Never forget your humanity!”

“Yes, godfather!” Both brothers replied at the same time before all three gathered in an embrace.

Aina continued walking, but not towards them. She thought it was a private affair, a family matter. It wasn’t her business to interfere. Though to be fair, she was surprised to find that the three brothers were raised by Old Jine. She only recalled that Old Jine had one daughter, but nobody would tell her anything about that daughter, not even her name. Aina had simply assumed that she married away and never came home afterwards.

She strode with a purpose, towards the one place that offered her comfort now. No food, no water, no fire. All she had left was the majestic brilliance of the mechas of this world. Carrying a bucket with muddy water smelling of some kind of animal dropping on her left hand and an old rag that used to have vivid colours, she approached the red-green mecha that laid prone near her former home.

She propped up the ladder against the side of the strider’s chest, before climbing up on her own. Thanks to the villagers helping clean up the glass in order to safely bring out the pilot last night, it wasn’t difficult for her to step into the cockpit, now wide open. Once inside, she placed the bucket of brown water down and started lovingly cleaning the blood off the leather chair and the panels.

She cleaned it gently, almost lovingly, like a mother washing her baby clean for the first time. In the morning light, the washed leather gleamed like fire. In the morning light, the light reflected gently from the steel panels.

Aina put her face closer to the surface, closely looking at the blood spots visible under the morning light. Once she was sure she got all the blood out, she wiped dry the seat and panel with another piece of cloth. Then, almost giddy like a young girl, she sat on the seat.

Well, instead of sitting, it felt more like she was lying down. Aina looked at all the writings on the panels in front, on her sides and overhead. The alphabets were foreign to her, yet, she somehow understood what they meant.

Aina activated the power switch, a simple toggle switch overhead that she recalled existed in old 60s to 80s machinery. She toggled the switch back and forth, wondering if she got the direction wrong, but nothing happened. She felt a little disappointed. After all, she already imagined all the lights turning on as the power surged.

Maybe something else needs to be turned on.

She started rummaging around. Checking the compartments, opening latches and pressing buttons, but nothing happened. All she had to show for her time was an old revolver that carried five bullets and a small box with two more rounds of bullets.

She wasn’t sure why it wouldn’t start. And feared that the battery had went flat from all that fighting. If that were the case, she wouldn’t be able to use the mecha at all. There was no way for her to recharge the mecha’s battery after all.

So she sat quietly in her seat, thinking of what she could do. She was happy that she could finally sit inside a battle mech, but without the ability to move it around, she couldn’t enjoy riding it. One itch was fulfilled, but not the other. She wanted to pilot a mecha, not just sit inside one like some tourist.

She suddenly thought about the seat itself. She recalled that fighter jets had electronics hidden behind their seats. So she pushed herself up, turned around and struggled to pull down the backrest.

Instead of finding electronics though, she found another compartment. Inside were cardboxes sealed in wax, a little bigger than both her palms put together. She took one of the boxes outside and tore the packaging open, unsure what to expect.

When she saw the contents, she looked confused, as if she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Then she saw the can, and the package of wax paper. And she finally understood, that in her hands, she held a treasure far beyond a mecha.

She ran down the ladder excitedly, almost slipping on the mecha’s steel plating. But such setbacks couldn’t curb her enthusiasm. She jumped off the last few steps of the ladder and ran towards the former chief’s mansion, carrying in her arms the box she found behind the seat.

“Everyone!” Aina called aloud, her face flushed from both excitement and running. “Food! We have food!”

The villagers stirred, disbelief written across their weary faces. How could there still be food? Their own food was lost in the battle. Their farms were failing. And the mountains have run out of its bounties. Where would she get new food now?

Faced with eyes full of doubt, Aina tore open the package and held up the dense block of pemmican. “This is preserved food. More nutritious than dried meat or brined vegetables. Just one of these blocks, if added to strew, can feed us all for days!”

Aina knew it was an exaggeration, not quite a lie yet definitely not pure honesty. There was no doubt that pemmicans were full of nutrients and a single block could sustain an adult for days. But therein was the problem, it was meant for a single person. There were over thirty people in the village. Just a single block wouldn’t be enough for more than a day.

But there were many more of the same boxes in the mecha. All with the same markings. So Aina was sure those were also food. Long-lasting food dense with calories, but not quite the miracle she painted it to be. Still, the villagers didn’t need to know the truth. They just needed food, and food represented hope.

A person who had lost hope would die slowly. Even if the body is healthy, there is no point if the soul is ill. Soon the body too would begin to fail if the soul felt no hope.

Soon enough, gasps filled the hall as the realization hit. Someone among the crowd wept, still hiding their face, trying to keep their tears to themselves. Children craned their necks, their ears perking up at the idea that there was food.

Aina smiled, her chest swelling with expectation and comfort. What she had given them was not just food, but also reason to hold onto their humanity. She gave them a way out.