I once knew a man who tried at nothing but to save the peace. And for so long he did. Battle after battle, war after war. But that was all he ever did; fight the chaos to harbor the peace. That was until one day he decided that peace no longer served him any reward. “The names change, but the streets stay the same,” he told me. He also mentioned that in all his years of fighting for peace, he’d realized that he did not know himself what that truly was to him.

So, one day, he let his armaments plunge to the ground of the battlefield and left that hallowed ground without any regret for what would happen next. He ventured the world, met merchants and traders, warriors and soldiers, crazy old men, and some wise ones too. He learned the techniques of farmers, tailors, hunters, leaders, even healers too. But even then he felt that he was not at peace, well more so not as happy as he wanted to be.

That was until he met my mother. “A most gentle soul,” he’d describe her. “The day I saw your mother in the town market her hair flowed a luscious brown and golden shine. Her smile was radiant like the sun and her laugh would make even the best of bards fill with envy by its harmony. I knew at the time I was just some stranger who’d she find only repulsive. So, I did what any sensible man in love would do, and followed her vigorously!”, he’d explain about his courtship with my mother. “Now, now. That is not how it went,” my mother would interrupt him. “Your father stayed in town for quite some time. And, although he didn’t know I knew, he’d watch my routine throughout the day as a way to ‘coincidentally’ bump into me at just the right moment to ‘sweep me off my feet as he put it.” mother said.

Indeed the man I once knew who tried nothing put to save the peace was my father. He married my mother a year later after they met and had my older sister Priscilla, named after our grandmother. Then my older twin brothers, Leon and Aeon; who were named after my father’s two best friends of the past. Then me, their youngest. Lilliana, they named me, after the flowers that grew out in the front yard of our home they’d built along the meadows outside of town. And for a time we were the happiest in the world. For a time, that is. My father knew well that just as easily peace could be attained, chaos surely had a way of finding its way back to you.