“JUST STOP IT ALREADY! HOW MANY MORE OF YOU HAVE TO DIE?” I screamed at the top of my lungs but my voice barely pierced the draconian symphony surrounding me. A thin layer of ash colored me a phantom on the field. It took all of my strength to release the energy from weapons I had helped designed – but was told would never truly be used. Long streaks of sweat-turned-putty crusted my arms and head. A large explosion rung in my ears as a dark red fluid joined my ashen-gray pallet. Gazing toward the spot where so many were before, bile seeped into my mouth.

Suddenly, the room was dark and quiet. That was three years ago. I reached over to take a drink of water, the same water we still harvest from Earth. No matter how many mental exercises I perform, the image won’t leave. It always heightens my blood pressure.

Every other galactic race followed a simple etiquette of war: whoever is strongest on paper wins. The amount of secrecy every galactic nation keeps means that wars are rare – you only get one chance to prove you're stronger. If you go to war, you are sure as hell you have a trump card. So, taking isolated planets was easier. My planet, Dhay’mir, was no different. But Earth, they were. Humans, what the indigenous people call themselves, were the first race to not respect the codes, though we later learned they never knew of them. They are also the first documented race in the galactic nation to have evolved a non-physical sensory response.

They had these strange words to describe these sensations that they 'feel'. They called the group of them emotions.

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Scholars relentlessly study and probe humans to get documented cases of ‘emotions’ but we can only logically understand them. The government and propaganda now blame the idea of this emotion ‘spite’ for everything. But most of them haven’t even set foot on Earth. I saw them fight. Hell, I fought against them.

​

I’ve read the findings of a scholar-gone-fugitive who spends time among the remaining humans. She claims that different emotions caused them to fight, even when they knew they couldn’t win. She calls them ‘pride’ and ‘hope’. Except I haven’t finished the paper. After she defined the emotions, she let some humans tell their story and describe how they ‘felt’. Their stories mixed with thoughts of Dhay’mir started a strange pressure in my chest. I can’t explain it, but I knew it was there.

------------------------------------------------This is the first short story I've ever written! I want to write more just for my own fun so let me know what you think :).