Peace

Jade clutched her arm as the blood spilled out. Blood as green as the grass. Except the grass had long since turned brown. Jade was the last shred of green in this world.

It had been like that ever since the Peaceful came. They vowed to eliminate violence.

And green was violence. The trees, the grass, everything green had to go. Because green was violence.

Jade could not scream, even though the pain ripping through her arm made her want to. She kept her fingers tight around the wound, hoping to stem the flow. The green blood. The poison blood.

The Peaceful were after her. They sought to eliminate Green. And Jade was the embodiment of green. Her eyes, green. Her name, green. Her blood, green.

Of course, she didn’t know it, but the Peaceful had already found her. They were silently circling, closing in, waiting for the right moment. They were watching her green blood, her green eyes, her green hair, her green skin. She was green.

The Peaceful were from another planet, the planet Emerald, or so it translated in Jade’s language, and they had seen it destroyed by violence. The Peaceful knew it was because of Green. Their planet had been cursed. Now, they traveled the galaxy, eradicating the green and leaving the planets once they had been made Peaceful.

Often, that meant leaving behind broken families and desolate wastelands, but the Peaceful didn’t care, and why should they? Their mission was just. Peace at last...

For so long, peace had been unattainable. Wars had ravaged Earth for decades now, ever since the assassination at the Alliance in 2999. Humanity thought that, as a new millenia arrived, it would be a new chance for peace, for growth, but instead, it only ushered in war like had never been seen.

The Peaceful had their sights set on Earth for years. They knew Earth was very similar to Emerald; cursed by the green. And so they came to help.

That was in 3006. Before people stopped keeping track of the dates and just focused on surviving.

Soon, almost no one was surviving.

But Jade had survived. And now she was about to die.

For years, she’d wondered why the Peaceful thought she had green blood. It was red. Her eyes were a dark brown. Jade was not green.

Until she realized it.

Their eyes.

The Peaceful saw the world in monochrome, and in their society, they had deemed the color they saw “Green.” Everything they saw was in shades of green.

And when Jade finally saw the Peaceful, closing in on her with their beady black eyes, she wondered when they’d realize it. When they’d start to turn on each other. She wondered who would be the last one standing.

She wondered when they’d realize that the green wasn’t the violence, they were.

She wondered all of these things, but she’d never get the answers.

She wouldn’t be around to see them.