Week 2 - Write about Indians
In our dreams, we fight these battles again and again, and make the invaders pay for every drop of blood that they've spilled.
In our dreams, we take back the lands that are ours and then we strike a peace, one that is not broken for generations.
In our dreams... even in our dreams, our victories are fleeting. In the waking world they linger for only moments before we remember who we are and where we are. We know what foolishness it would be to act on these dreams, and so we do nothing.
The wild stallion must be trained before it can be ridden; the invaders speak of it as 'breaking' the spirit of the horse.
In our dreams, we gallop across the plains as we once did.
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There are those who say that this is the a trickster god punishing us, or that this is an evil omen but we will rise again if we listen to the signs, or that their God is more mighty and we should worship Him.
But I do not believe any of those things. I've seen that they can be beaten, just as we can; they bleed the same blood we do and die just as easily to knives and guns. There are simply more of them, and they will not share their land, and so there can only be conflict.
And there was, for decades.
Years ago, every man and woman took up bow and horse, and then musket and cannon against the invaders. We learned from them and our allies and we fought for our lands, for our lives. But for every victory, we were handed ten defeats; every warrior we lost was one father that would not be there to teach his child, while our enemy were as numerous as the trees in the forest, as the stars in the sky. Even when we agreed on a peace, it did not last - it never lasted more than a few years before they were at our doors again, with guns or worse, false gifts.
Eventually, we realized what it meant. We stopped fighting the all-consuming wildfire and simply retreated from it as it burned the lands that our ancestors were raised on, the lands that were our children's right. We ran, we melded into the forest, we were determined that they would never find us. It worked, for the longest time, for we knew the forest better than they, and knew how to remain hidden even in plain sight.
But to run forever requires land to run on, forever, and eventually we came to the ocean, the vast, unyielding ocean, and we can not run across the water.
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They will find us here, too, and that will be the end; they will triumph, and we will fall, and perhaps no one will ever know that we existed.