Photo courtesy of Yinglan

These were not the lands of his ancestors.

Long ago, his people had been men of the forest.  They’d foraged and hunted in peace for generations in woodlands far to the east.  Then, men with guns had taken their land, marched them off through tears to the empty places in the west they did not want.  No one had asked his ancestors what they wanted.  They were simply told their land wasn’t theirs anymore.  That it had never been to begin with.

Now, he stood upon the towering rock for the last time.  Soon, he would lead his people to a distant place: a new forest, one on a different world, where no men with guns could ever reach them.  This time the march would be a willing one.  This time, they would truly be free.

Around that distant star, they would find a place where that striped banner was meaningless.  And he took solace in knowing that now, in a world without boundaries, it meant nothing here, either.

Written for the FFfAW Challenge – Week of June 26, 2018.  Word count: 169.  The preceding piece is based on a planned story, in which the native tribes of North America leave Earth to found a new homeland, known as the First Nation, on a group of planets in a distant star cluster.  Read other stories based on this prompt at InLinkz.com.