I pray for a much simpler time, a time when the war didn't ravage the battle fields.

I wish that others childhoods are not snatched away the way mine was, let them not be forced into a life of pain from such an early age, let them keep innocence. I lost my innocence the minute I witnessed death, how many others would follow down that road before the war is forgiven and forgotten? I wish that no more souls are stolen by deaths greedy hands. Death has stolen too many in wartime, to many fall into its cold clutches.

Is it too much to ask for me to not need to see children marching off to fight in battles that they know they can never win; I know longer want to look into their sad eyes as they prepare to be silenced.

All I want is for my dreams not haunted by everyone I've lost and the ones that I know I will lose eventually.

Someday, peace will come and free the souls that remain in this world but until then I am left to wander that wreckage we have brought upon ourselves.

So here I walk the battle field. The air was tainted by the smell of burning flesh and rotting bodies; I was so used to the smell now, it's wrong don't you think? To be used to the smell of death.

Corpses lay around me, strewn across blood stained meadows that once where beautiful, peaceful places but even here the war left its everlasting mark, there are so many bodies that no one can be bothered to collect them anymore, not even family. Now the once long green grass had been trampled over by soldier's feet and the once vibrant coloured wild flowers burned until they became the ash that blew away in the breeze.

I held back the tears that threatened to shed; it took every ounce of my willpower. To weep for the lost men and women would be considered a disgrace to their sacrifice.

I heard a low moan; it came from the clearing up ahead.

I walked up to the man; he lay in the middle of a pile of corpses.

He's bleeding… dying.

He clutched the arrow that poked out of his stomach, why did people invent such weapons? Why carve a tool created to kill? It made no sense to me and I doubted it ever would.

I hesitated when I saw the man's armour; he is of the enemy side.

Why should I help a man who killed so many of my kind? I pulled out my dagger, prepared to kill him, but, as I lent down I saw the fear and the sadness in his young eyes, like the children we sent to battle – he didn't want to fight, he didn't want the senseless violence that was war.

He had never done me any kindness so why did I find myself kneeling by his side?

Maybe because this man had never wronged my either.

What if I could help one, just one? What if I could let one soul rest in peace knowing that at the very end… someone cared?

I held his shaking hands in mine, "I won't leave you," I whispered.

He mouthed two words, simple and small yet they meant so much.

He said 'thank you'.

And for that moment it didn't matter that we were from different sides of the same war, didn't matter that we had different culture, background and history – all that mattered was that we are all human at the core and that every life is precious.

I didn't cry when my mother was stabbed with a poisoned blade, or when my father was shoot through the heart with an arrow, not a tear fell when my brother was tortured to death before my young eye's or even when my sister who I held more dear to my heart than any other was cut down by a women on a horse… but I cried for this mystery man until he met his final fate.

How did the world come to this?

In anger I became determined, this is not how the world should be and I would be the one to make the change.

Someone has to do it… why not me?

This piece was written for my Creative Writing Club and the huge collaborative project we're working on currently. Hope you enjoyed it, please review!