“Exactly,” Loki agreed happily. “You only hear the side of the story they want you to hear. That’s why in history classes, kids hear all about how the Americans won World War 2, despite the fact that they only came in at the tail end when the Allies had already been fighting for years.” He and Nish’s ancestors had been living in Canada at the time, and he’d fought in the war under the British Crown along with many other brave humans. And, unlike in the distant past when there were usually clear winners and losers of a conflict, this battle wasn’t as black and white as historians would lead impressionable young children to believe.
At that thought, Nish perked up in the back of his mind. ’I never thought about that,’ she said, ’Grandpa never talked about it.’
‘For good reason,’ he replied grimly. ‘Those are some nightmares you don’t want.’
“Anyway, the moral of the story is, don’t believe everything you read. History is alarmingly subjective.” After a beat, he added, “and mythology,” since he just realized he was openly equating ‘stories’ with history.