War & Peace: The True Story

• Jared Phang, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2021

In the time before dictatorship, government corruption, or even the school bully existed, everyone in the world had been at peace in the hands of Power, the deity of balance, who had been watching over the humans. Power was a generous and modest being at first, which is, let’s face it, ironic as of now. But as the years went by, and the humans spread. Power struggled to maintain the balance of humans, conflict was breaking out. Then one day, Power said, “Hey, I have an idea! I’ll create other beings to watch over the humans!”, since he would leave Earth to travel elsewhere. Little did he know that such an idea would cause chaos, literally! Power created the twins of balance, War and Peace. War was the destroyer (What were you thinking Power!), and Peace was the creator. Power thought, before he vanished, that these two beings would take his job to watch over the Earth. Boy was he wrong!
And then War started to create trouble. Being the destroyer, he started to influence countries, and create tensions and anger between others, starting wars. Eventually, he gave the people ideas to fight with, all the way from swords and axes to war machines, guns, and of course, the atomic bomb. And there were the two world wars, which was when War was at its prime. Then War decided to escalate destruction, by creating yet more beings to help him terrorize the Earth! There he created Chaos, Corruption, and Anger three more horrifying beings from War alone!
Peace was horrified to see what had happened to the world. Unlike war, Peace was a kind and gentle being, and wanted to change the world to how it was before. All this time, Peace was riding War’s coat-tails and trying to convince that violence was not the way to gain power. In fact before the world wars, Peace created the Nobel Peace prize from influencing Alfred Nobel, one of Peace’s best moments in those troubled times. But Peace had little success otherwise. At first, no one listened, and kept using conflict for dominance over other countries, which greatly hurt Peace. But slowly, the damage from War took its toll. Countries and Nations had been seemingly brought to shambles, with some countries living in despair, as victims of other greater countries. It seems as if all hope was lost, but hey, Hope escaped from Pandora’s box millennia ago. Peace tried to convince the countries that had yet to be corrupted by War and warned them. Some listened, others ignored. However, this was the time when humans had started to realize the situation they were put in by War, victim countries like Japan were in ruins, and they knew they had to change their ways. So, some countries took action, like Australia, Iceland, Sweden and many others following and began to create fair laws of equality, justice and human rights, that was how democracy was invented.
Then people decided to emphasise and strengthen peace from around the world. Slowly, other countries began to follow Peace, while others gave up War, and left him behind. Peace was gradually being allowed to control our world instead of war. And just like that, War started to lose power, but his power had not ceased; there were still numerous countries still at war, and he would use that power, against Peace soon. The battle between Peace and War continued as of today, two wolves fighting against each other, but the one that wins would be the one you feed. So, which side would you choose?