by Sam Sea
There, facing death, in an instant of an eye blink, he remembered something that happened centuries ago when he was not more than a boy…
He remembered his grandfather holding him in his hands, on his lap. He was not older than nine, slightly younger than the girl next to him. He came home after being ruffed up by three older boys. And suddenly was hearing old man’s familiar calming voice…
You do not need to cry; and you do not worry. Whatever other boys did to you…You do not need to worry. They cannot hurt you. You are Higgs.
Don’t you know the stories of the House of Higgs? Don’t you know that the grandfather of my grandfather was one of the twelve who walked with Silth himself at the land of Sartha when the empire was forged, when eternal life was found, and blood flew like rivers and men lost lives with no count?
That blood, the blood of old, the same blood runs through you… So, you see, you don’t need to worry for pain is nothing more than a fleeting wind, and death, death…even if it comes, cannot erase your existence.
For so long, he believed those words. It got him through the wars. But there, looking at the creatures slowly advancing toward him, seeing the sinister confidence in the eyes of their master, he was not so sure they would hold true anymore. It was more than just a fear for his own life that held him frozen. He knew that the life of the little girl next to him, his wife, all people he knew and didn’t could soon perish and be lost forever.
As he finally exhaled what might be his last breath, he just didn’t know what to do next.
About the Author
Sam Sea is an author who takes interstellar trips and travels through the stars and distant galaxies and from time to time remembers to write about it all.
He equally likes to mingle with emperors of galaxies, with space pirates that raid them, with deadly assassins whose looks can kill as well as their guns, and with beings that never need to grow old.
He’d like to use this chance to apologize if his writing can sometimes seem rough and not well refine. Bit in his own words, he would like to say: “So many things to see, so many beings to meet, and so little time to put it all down…”