Starlings Pagan

January 17

January 17, 1950

Ivar found her sleep awake in the sandbags by James Maisie's bakery.
The heir to every chain-link bakery in Vermont. The sun was creeping up and snow still hadn't calmed. Ivar stared at the bottom of her foot with a layer of hoar and ice crystals, they were the color of her mothers red wine. She was cold.
Don't let them see you. Hide!
Were the words that kept repeating in her little mind, her mothers last touch so poignant like the tip of a knife. She wanted to go back to the house, she wanted to see her family one last time. However, Ivar always listened to her mother, these were commands which were to be forever held in the palm of a despondent soul. So there she sat, drab outside the bakery. The townsfolk were about to wake in any minute and Ivar had no choice but to stay hidden, camouflaged with the sandbags. Street lights started to vanish and with that silence. James Maisie's voice hurdled through a window.
He said, "Let's get ready!"
The smell of freshly baked bread stirred in the air suddenly, and Ivar's hands quivered behind her back. Ivar stood up and started walking towards the bakery. Her stomach grumbled like men in a tavern. Her fingers rose to her lips as she took an inhale from the bakery.
It was open, and Ivar was hungry.
She opened the door and slipped inside. Somehow, James did not catch a glance at the little girl who peered over the wooden countertop. Then, Josephine Maisie, who is married to James, startled Ivar with a hurtling scream, "Oh, dear!"               Ivar's head snapped back in a sudden motion, and the tall, slender woman with coils of hair took her shaking body into her hand.
"You look awful," the woman cried. Ivar just shook her head, and words were something that seemed to stump her. When Josephine's worried expression returned, a familiar face appeared on it—Ivar's mother.
"What the hell is going on?" James came from across the counter, and the same look of worry spread to his face like a disease shared between the married couple.
"Are you hungry?" The bakery man asked while stuffing bread into a basket.

Ivar just shook her head again.
"Well, here," he said, handing Ivar a basket of the freshly baked bread. Ivar didn't want to talk because of her mother's orders, but she was starving, and to not say thank you would just be so impolite.
"Thank you," whispered Ivar through a hesitant smile.
She was on her merry way with the bread.
Ivar never learned how to tell time, but people were walking the streets with suits and dresses on, so it must've been church day, which she knew was always at ten o'clock. It was early morning, and Ivar was happy with herself. She took a step back toward the sandbags she was sleeping in and ate tiny pieces of bread. Ivar needed to save the bread so she could eat for a couple days.
As time moved on, Ivar noticed the quiet was soon interrupted because church bells rang and people's voices soon cluttered the streets once more. Ivar noticed a man walk out of the cathedral with a woman, yet his eyes kept stealing glances at another man from across the street coming from the second door of the church. When the man the woman parted, the two men met up and started walking towards Jame's Maisie's Bakery. Ivar was scared but she buried herself under the sandbags and watched the two men quietly. The weird thing was that these men didn't walk into the bakery, they walked behind it. Ivar, being the curious young girl she was, scurried out of the sandbags and into the dirty alleyway that was right next to her. The men were behind the building and were perched on broken stools that must've been thrown out by James. Ivar couldn't hear the mens' exchanged words, but she sat still watching them. Ivar's eyes were wondrous because before this she never saw how people interacted. The two men continued to talk, and Ivar being unable to hear was shocked when the man stood up and started to yell.
"Nobody can know, Ian."
Those words echoes in the ally and then the man sitting on the stool stood up. The man who yelled was much taller than the second man but tension was stern between these two men. Ivar was worried she was going to get caught beholding such a clandestine meeting. The taller man bowed his head down so that his lips were on top of the other man's lips.
Ivar couldn't believe her eyes. Her little mind thought only men and women were meant to kiss. No, she wasn't disgusted, she was mesmerized.
After all these years of hearing love can only be shared between a man and a woman she saw the complete opposite. Love was always such a delicate and beautiful thing to Ivar. Her eyes wrinkled to the smile the grew on her face as she watched the two men continue to kiss.
Why did they have to hide it though? 
She backed away back to the sandbags and the air was keen cutting cold which made a bitter thud in Ivar's heart. She stowed the sandbags on top of her feet and tried yielding heat by rubbing her hands together.
It was too cold.
Her eyes closed and she dreamed of a fire that kept her warm. Ivar knew her family was never coming back, yet these still feelings she had ran deep in her blood and told her she wasn't going to be alone forever. Ivar thought of the two men, she thought they weren't alone forever. Ivar thought her mother was cruel for keeping this type of love silenced.
In the end, it was just love, and that is something a quiet person yearns for in moments of isolation— especially Ivar.
A lonely soul she was, but the words her mother spoke to her, before the calamity, was to be forever held in her palm with every step Ivar took.