The large majority of my life has been spent in ignorance. I’ve been alone a lot of my life, and nobody really taught me much outside of the formal education I’d received, the education that did practically nothing. Sure, I knew how to do complicated maths, but did I need that? No. Not when all the jobs involving math are for brainwashed professionals who won’t die for a million more years.

I’d always been a fast learner. It was just that I didn’t care. There was no reason to. But then mum hired the tutor. My marks had been dropping, and she assumed it was because I didn’t understand the material. She didn’t bother asking me either.

I was all set to drive this tutor off. I was ready to be the stoniest, most unwilling pupil this tutor had ever had. But then he strolled into our waiting room, an extremely unfashionable top hat lightly resting in his hand. He was insanely tall, even for a faerie. The doublet he wore was a vibrant emerald green, his pants of a startling teal. His boots came up all the way past his calves, and the leather was dyed a rich green. His outfit far outshone anything I could have expected, not just because I thought he would be a dull prick… but because it was the middle of winter.

His willingness to go against the very fabric of our society is what opened me to him. As he taught me, his eyes sparkled like sapphires. And he didn’t just teach me what I was due to learn in school. He taught me real things, valuable things. It was under his teaching that I grew to question the world around me.

And now my questioning is coming in handy. Every hallway I pass, every face that I scan, every perfectly engineered soldier… I’m questioning it. I don’t know why we’re fighting this war. I’m not entirely sure who we’re fighting. And I want to know why.

Most wars recruit their soldiers out of fear and hatred towards the enemy. Most wars are full of propaganda and misinformation. But who would know that? The only ones that would know that would be those who studied human history. Human history is never taught in schools. It’s not important. Why would we care about the inconsequential wars fought every other year, all at the same time? The only things humans have ever been good for is innovation. Truly, their lives pass so fast compared to ours, their brief impacts so small and yet… they’ve made more happen for the sake of their own progress than we have in hundreds upon hundreds of years. I suppose that’s because we’re satisfied with the way things are. We don’t need change. We don’t need more than we have. What we have is already in perfect condition.

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. My tutor’s often spoken anecdote, taken from the humans themselves gives me a smile. He tried to fix things because he felt they could be better. Sometimes he took them apart for the sake of showing how inefficient they were. But nothing he touched remained unchanged.

An intimidating faerie stands in front of me, her ram's horns curling around her head and her hair pulled back severely from her face. Her eyes scan me disapprovingly, her fingers tapping a scarred board clutched severely in her fingers. She’s probably pissed off the Queen, she’s probably in trouble and that’s why she’s here.

“And your name?” She says, raising an eyebrow at me, scanning my uniform. She doesn’t care much apparently, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn’t even write my name down as I say it. I hate the monotony of my voice, but I can’t help it. It’s so much less threatening when you act like you’re brainwashed.

“Taliani? Your line is over there.” She gestures offhandedly, looking at the person behind me. That’s another problem with the military. You don’t hear the person behind you, because they have the same step as you. Taking my place in line, next to a hundred identical faeries in a hundred identical uniforms, I wonder how many lines there had been before this. How many lines just like this one had gone into the fight unknowing of their enemy and had come back drained.

Or not come back at all.

Which fate was worse? That without magic, a slow death, feeling the absence of everything that completed you? Or ripped apart, head from body, limb from limb, a brutal and violent death? And the question that their families undeniably wondered.

Which brought more honor to them?

Standing there, in the line of identical people, I make an assessment. They don’t know what they’re getting into, what they’ll face. I know better than some, but not as well as most. And I don’t want to know better than I do. If I want to find anything out, I have to stay here long enough to go to battle with the Queen herself.

I feel my time running out.