Flames, Promises & Dust

Ch. 1 - New Beginning

New beginning

If anyone had told her that she was going to be on a flight to Africa today then Briar would have laughed in their face and called them all crude names. She would have. Because she was Briar, and nothing went unplanned when it came to Briar. Everything had been well planned in her in head- even if she had been told she won the lottery she would have torn the lottery ticket in half. Because she knew fairytales did not exist. It was a well written rule to not believe in fairytales where she came from. Oh, Briar knew that fairytales did not exist; she did not need to look around her surroundings and believe that theory. She just knew. 

 A rule had been implanted in everyone’s brain, to not dwell on maybes and what ifs.  Because those were just fantasies that would never come true. They were scapegoats to make you forget the reality. Briar understood that rule all too well. She lived by that rule, it was all she knew and it was all she depended on to survive. With that rule anyone could map out their journey from beginning to end.  It was a simple rule, but weighed too much upon people’s minds. And the unlucky failed to plan out their pained lives. All they did was fantasise about what ifs and maybes. Briar had no time for such. She had already mapped it out by the age of eleven.  She had groomed herself well and ready when the time was right.

All you had to be was fast or smart. The plan was to run. Jump the border fence dividing heaven and hell and escape to a neighbouring country and seek for freedom and fortune; or join the army. The thought of dying for the country she loathed was more thrilling than being gunned down at the border. Laughing and fighting amongst people she wished to slaughter was more appealing than dying from hunger or polluted water; or bombs falling from the sky and landing on the rooftops of the orphanage she called home.  

Opportunity was not something that came knocking on her door very often, and when it had finally paved through and found her she snatched it and grabbed hold of it. Anyone with a right mind would have too; snatched it and kept a firm hold of it. But of caused Briar did not take this kind of opportunity as such, but as luck. Because where she came from this sort of luck was rare, unheard of. And some would even be terrified to touch it. But Briar knew that this was it for her, the minute she learned of it. She wasn’t about to let it pass by. She was granted a new beginning and she was holding on to it.

She was going to be far away from all of it, far away from blood, far away from poverty and war, from crooked politicians; and more appropriately further away from her past.

She didn’t dwell much on that thought. She looked up from her hands and peeped through the small window then gawked at the thick white clouds.

Her uncle had encouraged her to open the blinds minutes after the aircraft’s take off.  She wouldn’t have believed at all if she was told that she would be floating with the clouds. She suddenly wished she had been born a bird.

“You will love Africa.” Her uncle had said earlier. “There is plenty of sun; your skin will turn dark.”

Briar had smiled at that. She had always loved the sun while growing up, when it shone down to earth without being interrupted by various objects in the sky. It grew difficult to look up in the sky and not see the flying missiles or helicopters roaming around searching for terrorists.

Briar sighed, she didn’t want her thoughts to linger around that subject but it was all she knew. It was what she grew up in and all she thought of. The eighteen years she had lived were based around terror and woes. If she was not thinking of defending herself she was thinking about how and where she was eating her only meal of the day.

Briar sighed again.

Oh, the sun. Thick grey smoke now loiters in the sky where she came from. The sun has become an enemy to the people. Because each day it rises, it reminded them of that they still had to live through the pain and despair. It reminded them of their hunger and the stench of death surrounding them. But it gave them hope that they had few days left on this earth; a few days to escape. The sun no longer existed. Its magnificence has been decrease to the same level as a light bulb. The only light it served was not for the starved, but for the soldiers who were in constant search for terrorists.

Oh England, you have destroyed yourself.