L'manberg deserved better.
All of the pets deserved better. Left behind in houses, some dearly loved by their owners, some barely known by their owners yet. A horse and a bee left behind in a Christmas-decorated house while bombs rained down and their desperate owner lamented that he couldn't save them, that never saw January 7th. A blue parrot gifted to a friendly ghost that lived in a sewer, that never got to meet its owner before the underground pipelines he lived in were completely destroyed. A community of bees that once lived happily in a giant dome, before that dome became a smoking crater along with the nation it belonged to, forever gone, the bees along with it.
The buildings and structures deserved better. The fondly-recalled memories, and days of fun and laughter spent creating them. Cheerful and jovial Christmas decorations, now burnt, devastated, and torn, but once spread throughout a quaint town with the intent to bring a splash of color and a merry atmosphere to the home of its tired yet hopeful citizens, meticulously created by the friendly yet often shy new kid that records the nation's minutes. Glimmering paper lanterns floating over the city, shining bright amber to light up the night sky, hand-crafted carefully and lovingly by a cheerful ghost in a yellow sweater. They were forged from the nostalgic memories of a time long ago, where a much younger and more innocent depiction of that ghost had been taught how to create those lanterns by a winged man with warm eyes (the same man who now rains explosives and flying creatures of destruction onto those burning lanterns, standing quietly on a dark grid while he struggles to look at the pained expression of his ghostly son). A lone tree, standing tall and proud amidst the chaos and destruction, that was once a promise of hope and a bright future despite everything that had been thrown at it, bursting into flames and withering into nothing by the hand of a melancholic girl that had once loved it so, whispering the words of a fallen friend as she watches it burn.
The citizens deserved better. A young boy that loved the nation with the fierceness and determination of very few others, despite spending more time cast away from it than calling it his home, that has never been able to truly find a place he can safely call 'home' again since its destruction. Another boy that had the weight of the world thrown onto his shoulders, and who longs for the feeling of safety that he had when he was apart of L'manberg, who has never stopped building walls and fortifying and weaponizing any place he calls his home out of fear that one day, it will be ripped away from him as well. A fox that regrets leaving the land he grew up in, who runs away to isolate himself from the rest of the world despite feeling lonelier than ever, but who really just longs for simpler and happier days when he felt he truly had a family. A spiteful man in a casino that built walls around himself and his heart, angry at being hurt over and over again and losing everything he loved, but who was once happy and goofy, and carefree. Two teenagers hurt and scarred by the world around them, that sought to weaponize their anger against a scapegoat, but were really just lonely and hadn't truly had that feeling of community that they sought for since the fall of their old nation. A lonely man who once loved that nation with his entire heart, that fell into despair and hopelessness over losing it, that cared about it and its inhabitants so much that the only way he truly thought he could save it, and save them, was to destroy it. Yet, with it now gone, and himself alone, he stares longingly at the replica of an old van, an old memory, and wishes deep down that he, too, could have that same feeling of community and companionship that he once had in that old nation. All of its old citizens do, but that nation no longer exists, and it didn't get what it really deserved.
L'manberg deserved better.
