Fallen From Grace

Falling, falling broken star,
Glowing moment from afar,
Everyone knows what you are,
Up above with blinding might,
Blasting earth and rock away,
Run away, run away!
Falling, falling broken star

The lyrics were different now, after the Purge. Nobody had changed them, but children sang them differently. It was even a game, where the largest child would fall into the center of a ring and flail around. Anyone he touched was Taken and had to chase the other children until everyone collapsed from exhaustion.

When she was a child, Lyna had played tag. Now, the adults played tag, chasing down Taken. Children pretended to be Taken. It all seemed so real, far different from innocence and sweetness and the other notions of protected childhood.

For just outside the compound walls, monsters roamed the woods. Just last night, Lenkos had been killed by a Spitfire. They had avenged him, of course, with over a hundred Taken slaughtered and thrown in a pit. It was how the politics worked. The Taken patrolled their own, and when they did not the wrath of the armored suits descended on them.

But the same held true if humans wandered below the treaty line. Humans stayed up the mountains, where the Taken could scarcely breathe. Taken wandered the valleys. That was the new order.

She remembered the days when it was different. Her father was taking her shopping, the day it all changed. He had been away on deployment for a year and she had spent a year waiting desperately for him to return. He had taken her on his motorcycle, despite her mother's protests. They were eating at a restaurant, a concept foreign to these children used to rations and mess halls.

"Eat the enchiladas, baby," her dad had said. "You'll love them."

"Mommy says they're too hot," she'd been saying, but her father wasn't listening. He was staring at the TV screen, his beer halfway to his mouth.

"What is it, daddy?" she'd asked. Then, when he didn't answer, "Daddy? Is something on the television?" She couldn't see over the back of the booth and her father was always very strict about sitting up on her legs in public.

"Baby, the whole world just changed," he said. She looked around desperately, straining to see. Her father already had his cell phone out, texting someone, texting her mother, reporting in for duty during a national emergency.

She'd seen it at last as they hurried out of the restaurant. A massive burning blob hurtling towards earth, striking the ground suddenly. She knew what they'd all seen: Inside the fireball was a ship, with windows and doors and fins. But the doors were too big for humans and the windows were darkened.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so bright,
Like a diamond in the sky,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.