Chapter Text
It was an unusually quiet night in the small village Ena called home. Too quiet for her. No crickets were chirping, no light breeze disturbed the motionless leaves of the trees. It was quiet like death. The full moon had begun to set, but Ena couldn't sleep. The air was thick and uneasy, almost drowning.
She sat up in her bed and brought her knees up to her chest, embracing them. She looked out of her window, watching the setting moon and stars as they tingled in the dark sky. She tried to think about what the soldiers might be doing. Were they sleeping too? Were they planning on another attack in the morning on the nearby villages and cities? She didn't know.
She was born into war, that's all she had ever known since she had first opened her eyes.
It was quite common for the sirens to go off, signaling a bombing alert whenever she was playing outside with her friends. Her parents would come out and call for her to come inside immediately for shelter. She would refuse every time, but her parents would force her in anyways.
How would a child know better? How would a child understand the concept of war?
She never took it seriously because the bombings were always far away. The strange, bone-chilling pops echoing in their house as they hid underneath the kitchen table, waiting for it to be over. She never understood why they did this. Her mom insisted on doing it every time the sirens began, and she pretended that this was some sort of game.
"You have to hide until the sirens and the bombings are over." Her mom would say. Sure, the kitchen table was not the most effective hiding spot in the house, but it was better than a cramped closet where they could get trapped if debris blocked their way from the outside.
The nights were usually peaceful, no sirens and no bombs woke them up. A grace period for everyone in the country. This was the only time of the day where they could let their guard down and truly rest.
But not tonight. Ena could sense that something was about to go horribly wrong.
It began with a soft, buzzing sound like a wasp flying through the air. The sound got louder and louder, like it was slowly creeping closer. It took her a few seconds to realize what made the sound.
Planes.
She didn't panic at first, it was common to hear planes whenever the bombings happened.
Wait...
Planes?
Then, the panic set in.
She almost fell on the floor as she jumped out of bed to alert her parents, but she was too late.
A loud boom shook the whole house and Ena froze in pure terror. It was close.
She couldn't really remember what happened next, but she heard loud explosions which vibrated the ground, waking up her parents. Her mother screamed, her dad withered in terror as the planes got closer and closer to their home.
The last thing Ena remembers is a huge blinding light breaking into the house and a deafening bang as her parents tried to reach for her. Then, the black void when she lost consciousness as rubble fell on her hard.
Many hours had passed when she finally regained consciousness. The first thing she noticed was the smell of smoke and the taste of metal in her mouth. She groaned painfully when she tried to push the debris off of herself. Her left arm was broken, and the skin on it was ripped off just like the left side of her face, but she could hardly feel the pain of them. She stood up and looked around the rubble of what remained of her home.
“Mom? Dad?” She called out. Ena clumsily moved debris after debris in search of her parents,
“Mom! Dad!” She tried desperately, but she received no reply.
She noticed a pile of broken bricks nearby, blood coming out of the cracks. She hoped, really hoped she was just imagining things, that this was all just a nightmare, but as she moved the bricks aside she saw the crushed body of her father, or at least the remains of him. Ena couldn't dare to search for her mom, she knew she was under the pile somewhere too.
With eyes widened, she made her way out of the remains of their home. The outside was worse, she couldn't see any house that was still intact. Her eyes darted from debris to debris as she looked around. She saw bodies and piles of bricks everywhere. Ena didn't feel anything as she looked at the house she once lived in, and the house her friends lived in, her neighbours, her relatives. Everyone was dead, but not her. Why not her too?
The sky above her was red like blood and she couldn't see the sun at all. Smoke made her choke whenever she tried to breathe and her ears ringed loudly. She stood and didn't look away from the sky, even when people came to search for survivors from other towns who tried to lead her away to treat her bad wounds. Then, she fainted again, but this time from the bloodloss.
Ena woke up in a nearby town’s hospital’s bed, white walls surrounding her. The pain and severity of her wounds finally hit her like a train and she hissed loudly. She moved the bed covers to the side and looked down on her body. It was bandaged up neatly, her left arm was in a cast and the left side of her face was bandaged up too.
The doctors told her her parents were dead, and she was severely injured. They also informed her that when she recovers she will move to an orphanage.
For the first time in a while her emotions came crashing down on her. She sobbed day and night as she questioned God why she didn't die too. She was a child afterall. A child who only knew war.