The women listened with bated breath; she could tell she had them now, and it made her smirk. Her voice had been wavering, but now, she continued her story with gusto. “I had been sitting on my laurels, and this incident pushed me into action. An enemy tribe attacked us. But this was not unusual; our tribe had been attacked five times before this last tribe attacked us. The difference was, was that this tribe fought with the morale and confidence to take us down. They were outnumbered, and they had worse technology, but they had such faith in their leader that it didn’t matter. They took us by surprise in the night; they slew our watchwoman and used her handprint to enter our base. Inside, they slew many of our women while they slept—those who did not have fortified doors were the first to die. Next, they came to my family's building. At this time, we were still unaware that anything was amiss outside of our fortified building, but the hammering on our doors finally caused us to awaken.” Ellia swallowed at the memory she was about to relate to these women who did not know her and did not respect her, but she pressed on. “My mother was the first to die. You women all might be tough, but you have no comprehension of that word until you’ve met my mother. My mother once defended me by herself from ten attackers when we were out foraging. These weren’t ordinary attackers; they were hungry enough to kill even the most skilled warrior. They were notorious scavengers who were known for dismantling entire tribes. And my mother managed to kill them while I clung to her fearfully.”

Ellia gazed at her listeners, pleased by how enraptured they appeared to be by her story. She nodded confidently to herself, and plunged ahead, despite the fact that she could already feel a lump forming in her throat. “My mother was the first of us to die. She and my father were aroused by the sounds of the hammering at our door and they grabbed their guns. They told me to stay put, and for a long time, I did. I listened to gunfire thundering through the house, and I clapped my hands to my ears, trying to obey the orders from my parents—but I couldn’t stand the thought of them dying downstairs without me while I cowered alone in my room. I grabbed my gun and was going to head downstairs when I saw from the top of the stairs, that my parents had made up a makeshift barricade out of the furniture and were hiding behind it and returning fire to ten enemy tribesmen. They had killed five when I had arrived at the top of the stairs, but I could see they had shot my mother once in the arm…”

Ellia found that she was breathing harshly upon recounting her story, and was becoming lightheaded. She sat down, smoothing her hair back. Her voice lowered. “I hate likeneing my mother to a cockroach, but that’s what she was in that moment. She turned her gaze toward me and saw that I was in danger from our enemies. She immediately leapt up from her hiding spot and fired upon our enemies while telling my father to stay down. In that moment, she was shot five times, and she took down three of our enemies…” Ellia cleared her throat, trying to clear away oncoming tears as she did so. She looked heavenward, praying that her mother was in the Zironist Paradise as she spoke. The last thing she remembered of her mother was a mangled corpse, a bloody mess that barely resembled her mother, and yet… that image was simultaneously inspiring to her. “The last thing I saw of my mother was a mass of blood, sweat and tears—a protective tigress to the last, covered in stripes of blood that she had more than earned throughout the years—and she still did not die. She managed to fire off still more shots, wounding the remaining enemies, but finally died when five more shots were unloaded into her, and she finally ceased to be with a mighty roar befitting that of a lion!” Ellia nearly yelled the last part of her sentence, and the women around her had their eyes unblinkingly fixed upon her. They said nothing; they didn’t want to speak. Both because they were embarrassed to admit they wanted to hear more, and because they wanted to plug their ears out of loyalty for their own leader.

Ellia, however, needed no vocal confirmation to see that they wanted her to continue. She could see it in their eyes. If she could drive the story and her speech home, then she knew she had them. “I ran upstairs with my father after that. He had a few bullets left in his gun, and he told me to go out the window while he distracted our enemies, and I made like I was going to obey him, but I turned back at the last second to help him. I readied my gun just as our pursuers arrived at the top of the stairs. My father shot one, I shot the other with deft aim. From there, we dove out the window, and we were greeted to a sight of our women being captured while our men were being gunned down. I will never forget how loud the screaming and gunfire was… I froze where I stood, overwhelmed with the fact that I had just taken my first life, and then, all-at-once, the rest of the enemy tribe was upon us."