Voice of War (Threadlight, #1)

by Zack Argyle

“I had a neighbor when I was a child.” Iriel finally broke the silence. She nodded her head as she recalled the memory. “His garden was beautiful, full of bright colors and exotic flowers. People from all over the city would come to see it, but they were careless. They stepped on his grass, picked the flowers, and muddied the walkways, so, he closed it off with a wall. But people still came. He added decorative stonework and ivy that bloomed in the springtime. It took all his time to care for the wall, but everyone admired him greatly for it. One winter, the people stopped hearing from him, and when my father went to his home to check on him, he saw the garden for the first time in years. It was dead. All of it. He walked on cracked stone, over thriving weeds and dead flowers. The neighbor had been neglecting the garden to care for the wall. My father walked into the house, and you know what he found? The man had taken his own life. “Chrys, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the wall is if the garden inside is dying. No one can live like that forever.”