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It was a warm late summer's evening. The sun was melting into the ancient trees behind the house. The slight waves of the dark water glittered with a bright yet somber light as far as the eye could see. Faith's eyes shined bright. There was a peace in the lines that the slight waves the lake produced, something she hadn't seen since she was a cub.
Since she was a cub... Glancing at the sky, she remembered stumbling across the coastline, the icy waves caressing and stinging her feet; she remembered lying down, limbs sprawled out, absorbing the heat of the sand, staring into the soft, baby blue sky, not a cloud in sight; she remembered gazing out over the lake, thinking about just walking into it and never coming back--it seemed to lure her in. The crashing waves whispered promises of the good old days when her father carried her on his back, his muscles making up in comfort for his lack of fur. Though she was an older, bigger, stronger, wiser, and smarter creature, she felt so young, so small, so weak, so inexperienced, so dull. As the sun began to set, Faith found herself as a young cub again, an energetic and unruly force of nature. Or at least that was what she seemed to be.
Coinciding with nostalgia were Faith's current problems. Tomorrow, she would be moving away from home for college. She'd been to the campus: a beautiful complex with lush greenery sporting actually decent, well designed apartments with interesting architecture. Nestled in the rounded mountains of Appalachia, the sense of security and delightful isolation that paralleled her hometown on the lake comforted her. Bumbling around in confusion and awe, she ran into a sophomore adorned with black and asked him what life on campus and the student body was like. Their obvious height difference made blatantly clear by his looking down at her, he mentioned how despite how much he wanted to dislike it, the school was fantastic. The college kids were tolerant and unbiased in general. Faith had a hard time making herself leave him. Something about him was familiar, just how his body looked.
However, now that she was a day away from leaving, Faith had no choice but to think deeply about residing there, and she became uneasy at the idea of living a cozy life on the other side of the mountains where no azaleas grew from wounded brick walls and concrete where the lingering face of war glaring into what lay in the primordial depths of the mind, both anthro and human. The irony of the military's flower-bullets put a weak smile on Faith's little snout. While she was driving there last year, Faith witnessed, as she interpreted, the tragedy of the rural country, the side of the nation buried away in the huge swaths of internal nature and and rotting steel mills was all that rang through her head. It was these people with whom she saw the consequences of her apathy that she wanted to have the opportunity to go to her college in place of her. Additionally, Faith had also always felt from deep within a desire to serve as her father did; although, she would then be preserving the peace in countries obliterated by years of chaos brought upon by the onset of war...
As she was lost in thought, her legs had begun to move on their own, her feet reaching for the waves. Suddenly, a crackle pierced through the air, jolting Faith back to consciousness. Her ears then head whipped toward the source of the sound: a small, sun-stained portable radio. It was beating out a familiar melody.
Faith's legs once again moved out of their own volition--one foot silently and seemlessly gliding across the sand--and she lay down on her side, palm-in-cheek---the same way she'd been listening to these broadcasts for as long as she could remember. The music tapered off, and an exhausted and relieved voice began to blare: "Good evening." Faith's eyes widened, her ears peaked. A gust of wind arrived from the lake. Some leaves on the trees eventually came to rest on the beach. He usually did not start off the addresses like this; he typically just blasted through a little hey-guys, and jumped straight into the broadcast, like he was eager to end the broadcast but masqueraded under the mask of brevity. He's talking just like dad did, Faith thought, very direct and forthright. Now that's the human in him!
"This will be my final announcement to you all." A faint explosion rang from seemingly miles away a couple of seconds after his words rang out from sea to shining sea. "From the jungles of the orient to the backyards of our homes, from a bleak Christmas to a sweltering May:" There was a pause. Faith's padded digits dug around in the sand enveloping her. Families--parents and their kids, kids and their siblings, parents and their spouse--had been torn apart, either for years or forever. Her eyes dampened.
"I- I applaud you all for your valor and courage throughout the war. What you have done and endured and overcome is beyond what can be succinctly expressed in words. And, on our hardships--as a father, I can understand every other parent; as a son, I can understand every other child." In the corner of her eye, she spotted an alabaster pole in the sand, slightly eroded over the years, as the words were transmitted over the radio.
"'Beyond words...' What a way to say you don't care," Faith murmured under her own breath. She took a breath and opened her mouth; however, no words fell out. And so there was a long pause. No wind blew, no waves crashed, no leaves fell.
"But no matter what is said, what is accomplished, there are times where when all is silent, when all is at rest, the void of space that paints the Earth the darkest of hours whispers, 'why?'" Faith sat up. Though her own muscles were aching to smash the radio and the voice and throw it all the way to Canada, she could not help but listen. "It asks, 'was it worth the cost?'" Faith's expression was stilt. Her gaze lost its focus on the radio and returned to the lake.
"We did it, paid our price, so that right now, a young child in mountainous Yunnan is waking up to a sunrise finally free from his forebearers' mistakes; right now, a young child in the rolling hills of Georgia is going to sleep, his mind at rest with the knowledge that tomorrow can only be better." She mindlessly took a handful of sand and let it sift through the spaces between her silky fingers.
"A white flag flies, persistent and powerful, with the force of fallen hearts of every background united by the common ideal of peace." Waves crashed on the shore.
"And with that... I conclude this message and this program. Good night." The radio turned to static. Faith's body jolted slightly and she shoke her head to reorient herself. Her right arm reached for the radio on the sand and with the sound of a plastic switch flipping, the static was cut. She struggled upright, her legs pricked, almost as if they were boiling but with no sensation of burning. Her fur sprinkled sand back onto the beach and the radio as she squatted down and picked it up. She turned her head to look far along the right side of the coast and spotted the alabaster pole. The gray fur on her particular anthro legs waving, she glided along the sand, her figure now a silhouette to anyone behind her. The pole's special sand engravings glittered as she approached. In contrast, the alabaster was dim. Under mountains of snow, under heavy hot air, even under water, the memorial endured. The second Faith settled onto the sloping, sandy beach, the sun struck the lake and shattered the glass lake into pieces, its incandescent matter bleeding into the patterns of the waves. Faith shook her head, rubbed her eyes, and slid her hands across the sand engraving.
"Dad..." she muttered, her eyes lost in the crevices and lines in the pole. Her snout pointed toward the burgundy sky. One tear fell, then another, and another, and eventually she surrendered to the emotion she had been fighting for years. She broke into an ugly sob, lying on her side, letting the sand on which she lay absorb her tears. By the time the clouds above turned a lofty pink, her spasms and convulsions ceased. Faith rolled onto her back, her body directly in front of the gravestone. Her arms sprawled out on the lukewarm shore, she stared up into the twilight sky; and there she walked into the stars and saw for herself a message from the spiraling constellations.
"Didn't you forget something, Faith?" The stars rang out, falling into her eyes. Faith's digits withdrew a little white flag, its low quality made up for by sentiment. She'd made it years ago and kept it preserved over the years. She stuck the pole of the flag into the sand, and the white cloth flapped in the dying breeze with promise.
"I never left you, darling."