Shan Yu wasn't the first man Mulan killed. The first she killed was a young soldier in one of the previous battles. It was kill or be killed, and she did what she had to do to survive. There were others after of course, but that first kill haunts her. At the time, she was a naive young girl who'd never even seen anyone pass away. She watched a man, a boy really, die by her hand. And when he lay there dying, he looked a lot less like the heartless demon who was fighting her, and a lot more like a terrified kid who didn't know what he had gotten himself into.
When Mulan was young, her pet goldfish died. It had technically been less of a pet and more of a prisoner, but to a five year old it is much the same. What caused its departure she wasn't sure, but she never forgot the realization that the still, floating body wasn't sleeping. What does death mean to a child? There was confusion, there were reassurances, and eventually there was the distraction of something new. Yet that fish, so cold, lingered on in her mind
( ... )
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