𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙏𝙃 - 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙨 𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙗𝙮

FIVE

FIVE

Ada was giggling as Achara threw dirt at her. Their little runaway was amazing. The young girl couldn't remember a time when she'd laughed so much. Was this it? Was this the childhood that they tore from her tiny little arms, the love they hadn't given her? The very thing Achara thought she wanted wasn't what she had wanted at all.

Love.

Yes, that's it. Love, the girl wanted to be loved and cared for. She wanted to be wanted by someone. A friend or lover, it didn't matter; she wanted to be loved. The past few years held no love for her. Achara felt used, though. She never really tried to reach out. She'd grown used to feeling used, to being pitied, like a stray dog someone took home to show people how 'kind' they were. They didn't care for her, they just wanted to look good, the girl never minded. She let them use her, she let them pity her because she thought that was love. She thought it meant they cared.

It was all she knew. All she was comfortable with, but being with Ada had opened her eyes, and shown her a genuine love that they had deprived her of for years. She couldn't even remember her mother's sweet voice calling out for her as they took her away. For years that's all she could remember, her sweet mother screaming out for her, being held back by soldiers while she cried out to her, pouring her heart out in the middle of the street.

Every night, she swore she could hear her mother calling her. Begging and pleading with the soldiers to let me go. Sometimes, when it got too real, she would call back. She would get on her knees and pray. She would pray for her family. Soon enough, her sadness turned into a deep vengeance. She prayed every night to whatever god there was to kill the soldiers. She would spend the night imagining the horrible things she'd do to them. The pain she would inflict on them, she wouldn't kill them. She would hurt them so badly they'd do it themselves. She wanted them to beg, to scream and call out just like her mother did the day they took her away.

She wanted them to feel how she felt. As they begged for mercy, she wanted to smile and hurt them even more, to give them the torturous smile the soldier gave her as he carved the word 'scum' into her lower right arm, to watch as their faces twisted in horror and fear. She never got to live those dreams. She was too weak and afraid in the end ‌to even realise that the Americans and Englishmen had taken over yet again. They said she would die.

Yet here she was, in England, where she was throwing mud at a gangster's sister. Since then, she had never allowed herself to get close to anyone. She tried, but the family wouldn't let her. Others would just give up and try to find company elsewhere, but this family was different and for the first time since the war, she felt loved. Like she wasn't just floating around waiting for the grim reaper to sweep her up into his arms and take her on her journey through death.

She was nothing until she had met them. They had unknowingly saved her from herself. She probably would be dead by now, hanging off the end of a rope under the cut, swaying like some useless rag-doll. Another young girl whose innocence and childhood was washed away from her. Everywhere she went, she felt bare. Like all her imperfections and impurities lit, like the spotlight suddenly being put on her as if she was a circus act. She hated the way they looked at her, the way men looked at her. Like a hungry lion waiting to prey on its next victim. She felt so vulnerable.

"Come on Ada! We need to pack if we want to make it back by dinner." Achara called out. She ran across the field, back into her cottage. They spent their time teaching Ada how to swim, and picking flowers and fruits. Achara even had time to paint. She felt like she could breathe again. She was alive once again. Raised from her pit, she had dug herself in and was okay. For the first time, she saw the beauty in life, the living. Nature, animals, her. She looked in the mirror and smiled. She liked herself. After years of constant abuse and self-doubt, she could finally stand to look at herself in the mirror.