So here’s the thing.
The thing is…
The thing is…
The war is over! The war is over and it is won and you helped end it. You’re considered the hero of the entire shebang even though the army did most of the work. But still! You’re a hero with awards and medals and stories of your exploits have spread far and wide through the kingdom.
Congrats! You would pat yourself on the back but the- the body’s not doing the thing. The body hasn’t been doing the thing for a good while now, although you’ve only recently noticed between the pull of the bottle between your lips.
You’d be more conscious of your alcohol consumption but again, long bloody war finally won. It’s a cause for celebration. Which is why you’re alone in the middle of a dingy bar at the outskirts of a dingier town where the news of the war’s victory has either not reached the proprietor’s old ears or has affected him so little as to not even hint at a celebratory ‘war’s over’ discount.
Yes, celebrating by drinking alone at a waterhole in the gutters. Truly, the best way for a war hero to savor their victories.
You sigh. Ask the old man for another shot. One thought presses into your tired mind as the watered-down piss fills your tongue.
Now what?
----------------------------------------
The next day dawns bright and too godsdamned early. You wake with tongue as dry as the desert you once spent a month trekking through. A headache beneath your eyelids capable of giving the dragon you defeated a run for its gold hoard. You haven’t showered since you’ve returned from the bar, your breath reeks of alcohol and you don’t even bother with combing through your hair as you descend the staircase to the inn’s first floor. It’s not a heroic appearance by any means, but then again, no one populating the inn’s dining area cares. Perks of having a full suit of armor as your military uniform and an insistence on wearing it everywhere. If you were sans armor, you can walk into a room filled with the very generals who commanded you to battle and they wouldn’t know.
You wonder where some of the generals are now. Probably in the capitol making plans for a world without war. Recovery, rehabilitation, reparations, reconstruction. Other words that start with the letters ‘re’. You should help. You should use your anonymous influence to good use and redirect supplies or something.
But by the gods are you tired.
You should…You should probably send off a message to your parents. Tell them you’re still alive. If they’re still alive to receive the message, that is. You should visit your village and tell them in person and confess that yes, you’ve heard of that very cool and wondrous war hero in the full suit of armor who’d helped defeat the Great Evil? Well, that is me. I am her. You should tell them this and then wait as their minds process the impossibility. Their only daughter, a hero? Their only daughter whom they not too long ago feared roaming free in the neighbor’s pastures—a hero?
Wait in anticipation as they either checked your head for a fever or ushered you inside or asked questions you’d rather not answer.
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You should do these things. It is what responsible war heroes and only daughters of distraught farmers would do. Or… Or you can drown your sorrows and uncertainty with a stiff drink.
You raise your hand and- and-
…Wait, you don’t do that?
You’re saying you’re not an only daughter to poor farmers turned war hero via mysterious circumstances with a slight alcohol dependency due to the trauma the war has wrought on your simple, peasant mind? What? You have an issue with the word ‘lowborn’. Well, you are. How else would I describe you? You’re a peasant born to an overgrown family too poor to clothe every child they popped out, much less feed and house you. You were bartered away at a young age to a slightly better off family but still within the same low social class.
In fact, you found out that the two people you called parents your entire life weren’t your parents sometime during the war and had very mixed feelings about it. Reading the receipts of your younger self had unlocked your earliest memories: a crowded house, constant crying, the feeling of rough-hewn feed sack over your naked skin serving as your shirt, a feeling of overwhelming loss as you waited, a meager suitcase packed as you stood in front of the only home you’ve ever known. It also explained your ‘parents’ attitude towards you over the years. Their over-protectiveness over you, for they had been barren before you came along and spent quite a bit of coin on you, but then when your little brother came along—an actual child of their flesh and blood…
Well, of course they would dote on him and you’d be cast aside. Kept around for chores and babysitting and then later kept close to be dressed up for potential suitors. Once again, meant to be sold to the highest bidder. Of course, you couldn’t stand for it. Surely, there was more to this world. Surely, if you ran away one night and signed up for the military disguised as a man, you could escape this life-
…What do you mean that didn’t happen? What? Are you saying this isn’t like you at all? You’re not a peasant who turned to crossdressing to flee the inevitable fated bestowed on all peasants, accidentally becoming a war hero along the way?
Ugh! Next you’re to tell me you’re not silently pining over one of your superior officers and lamenting the social and economic divide between each other, never taking into account that as a celebrated war hero who vanquished the Great Evil you could have anything you want, lands and titles and the pick of husbands and wives, but still view yourself as a disposable peasant girl to communicate your wants and needs, thus creating a pining situation that frankly could be shortened to a novella or a single five minute animated short.
…
UNORIGINAL??? You think the premise unoriginal? This is you, you know. You’re talking about yourself, your entire backstory! If you’re calling ‘the premise’ unoriginal, then you’re calling you, yourself, the person as unoriginal. Please, pray tell, if the premise is so u n o r i g i n a l, then why don’t you list one singular story which-
Mmmm.
Mm-hmm.
…I don’t know what this ‘Mulan’ is but I refuse to believe it hits all of these story beats. I mean, the main character—which is you, might I remind you—has a drinking problem. Does this ‘Mulan’ have a drinking problem? Does she lay awake at night thinking of the Great Evil she faced and the parents she disappoints and the superior officer she pines over as she-
Huh? What’s the Great Evil?
Yes, that’s a great question. Which I will explain. Thusly…
The Great Evil is…
It’s…
Well, you see…
The Great Evil is evil, isn’t it?
Yes, that’s what it is. No further explanation needed. And I must say, after your protestations, I’ve well received the point. You’re not a peasant girl crossdressing pining knight. You haven’t defeated the great and terrible evil, and you don’t have a drinking problem (that we know of. Remember, admitting it to yourself is the first step), and you won’t marry your superior who is currently searching the kingdom for you because you left your special sentimental, completely individualistic and somehow very identifiable childhood item behind and wants to return it to you. Not because it’s his duty but because he wants to see you again.
Yes, you are absolutely not that unoriginal and utterly bland person. But if you’re not all that, then that just leaves one question:
Who are you?