How the War Began

Three.

Now war is a question of space. One party feels they have too little of it and sets out in search of more or one set of people are displaced and need to settle elsewhere or one country has something another desires and so seeks to acquire this for themselves. In this way war becomes question of both space and desire, each pursuit upsetting the order of things.

Before the woman in the garden, before the boy with his questions, and before the incipient rumblings of war, there were two countries, each in close proximity to the other but neither with great knowledge of the other.

One was smaller than the other. A compact yet dense country, with many strange and varied landscapes where the weather was often unpredictable, changing not seasonally, not daily, but hourly. It had not always been like this. It was remembered in stories passed from mother to daughter that this land had once been predictable and dependable, one where crops had flourished and flowers bloomed, but now, with little way of knowing which way the wind would blow from minute to minute, farmers muttered and threatened to leave, people closed up shop and scrambled for passports.