From The Stars
The stars. She’s spent her entire life more concerned with the ground beneath her feet than the sky over her head. The sky is not her domain, not her responsibility. It had been easier to pretend that the terror that descends every year, didn’t exist until it happened. It is the way most of her race handles the warriors from the stars. The ones that will come for their tribute. Tribute made up of food and medical supplies, along with whoever the skrull chose among the population. Members of her race who return again different. Changed. With a hunger to leave their home behind again. Some had, most had, and never come home again.
Wanda had suffered as much as anyone. First her parents, and then her twin brother. But she had been counseled by the elders, and consoled by those that had also lost people. There is nothing to be done. To keep the peace, everyone had to make sacrifices. Some though more than others. Because her people are not warriors. They are farmers. Nuturers. Care takers of their world. For all their advances they have no weapons. No way to defend themselves. And would not know how to even if they did.
And for many years it has gone like this. Until the Skrull demanded for too much. More supplies than the planet could continually yield without adverse effects. Taking more than ever from the population, and even gone against their original agreement. Requisitioning children. Children that unlike their adult counterparts were never returned. Even a peaceful people such as her’s are; could not continue to turn a blind eye.
So they had sent out a distress call. Reaching out into the universe for aid. They had not held much hope for a response; but it had to be tried. There had to be others. Worlds not unlike their own. Worlds that did know the ways of war. Worlds that might help them break free of the oppressors they had lived for centuries in service too. Weeks had gone by, the Skrulls return growing closer. And what little hope they had possessed dwindled. But then....
Out of the dark. From somewhere galaxies away. An answer came.Someone heard them. Help was on it’s way. And Wanda like many of her kind had looked upwards. Watching the pale sky of the daylight, and inky jeweled blanket of night, with something other than fear.