All They Didn't Know

1st Entry

"JAYDEN DARCY

14 YEARS OLD

THE BRITSH ISLES

1780"

"1st January, 1780

Dear Diary,

I found this diary in the rubble today. It didn't seem to be used, so I took as my own. It's beautiful, I have to say, perhaps the second most beautiful and, indeed, expensive thing I own.

After the Bird Book, of course. Nothing could be better than that...

It was Near Year's Eve last night but when the clock struck midnight, any forced celebrations were, of course, entirely fake. I think that it was even worse than the last time. And the time before that.

For the fact that we have entered yet another, brand new year and are still in the exact same state, the exact same war, is really nothing to be happy about.

Anyway, to be honest, I don't really remember when The Proud War started because I was three at the time, but it's been going on a long time. As in, eleven whole years. And still it is nowhere near an end.

But I write this in my tent, in the afternoon, while it's still too light to do anything productive. Our camp is big, maybe 200 tents, and growing every day. We are all Scavengers, you see. We are those 'unfortunate' citizens who lost their homes to enemy bombings long ago. We have nowhere to go, nowhere to live, so we build tents and sleep in fields. There are hundreds of us but we move as one, placing ourselves near rich, highly strung houses and buildings, camping there until they are bombed down.

For when that happens, among the debris, we will find food and valuable things, wonderful things that are either kept or traded for one another among us. It is not the easiest way to go, and is certainly a very risky, tiring way of life, but it is a way of survival, and constant protection.

It is the best that we can do, and for that reason we are drawn together.

And perhaps in the new year, starting today, things will get better.

Perhaps this will be the year that the war ends for good.

Perhaps."