-or- the fifth installment
Supernova part V
I never thought the Goran looked particularly menacing, tall, gangly beings with a tight coat of hair of various colors, faces almost feline. But the news mods painted them as the most horrible of beasts. I went to sleep every night for years paralyzed by the fear of awakening to see the felinesque visage of a Goran, muzzle wet with the warm lifeblood of my parents, grinning cruelly as he savored the prospect of more fresh meat. Each morning I awoke, whole and physically unharmed, my heart racing as I fell to my knees and thanked the heavens that these beasts had left me alone, so horrible were the crimes the media blamed upon them.
Yet, through twenty-five years of nearly endless conflict, I cannot recall Goran’s ever attacking civilian soil. The dropped landside troops, but only as a surgical strike, to wipe out a construction yard, military equipment, of some other wartime machinery. Any civilian casualties seemed truly collateral. We, on the other hand, had no problem with civilian casualties, bombing epicenters of civilian activity, all in the name of warfare. I think the attacks were meant to break their spirit, or so the protestors were told before they vanished. They were certainly effective, if not for their purported purpose, then certainly to demonstrate our casual disregard for life other than our own. We truly battled for twenty-five years with Monsters, but it took those twenty-five years to realize who the Monsters really were.