Fire and Ice

Prologue

    
     I was young when the war started, but old enough to remember how life used to be.

     I had my own pale yellow bedroom, the color of the sun during a winter sunrise. With thin white curtains over the window, my grandmother's old pale green quilt on my bed, and a fuzzy white rug in the center of my floor. I used to play pretend on that rug. Made my toy figurines march through the faux snow and my favorite stuffed fox leap over pale dunes in search of arctic grouse.

     The pale green quilt became the grass in the summertime. I tugged on the corners and made mounds and wrinkles in its worn fabric to create plateaus, mountains, and caves. The rest of my stuffed animals would be placed in their designated areas; the bear in the cave, the deer in the field, and the mourning dove perched atop a mountain, watching its friends with concerned black bead eyes.

     At night time I would lay in my bed and gaze up at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that my papá had glued to the ceiling, making up new constellations and imagining them zooming about my room as miniature meteors.

      I miss that room.

      My twin brother's room was painted a soft hazy orange, like the beginning of an autumn sunset. He too had a few stars on his ceiling, but he made better use of his space by attaching homemade tin miniatures of old army planes to string and taping them above his bed.  
  
     Mamma was always terrified that the thin string would wear and break and fall on him at night. He was proud of his work though and wanted to display them where he could best see them. When the sun shone through his window at particular moments the tin reflected the light and cast ribbons of brilliance dancing across his walls.

     I know he misses his childhood room.
    
     All of the rooms in that little house were painted in some shade of dusk or dawn colors- my parents bedroom was a beautiful cream. My elder sister's was a light shade of rosy pink. The kitchen was a deep orange and the dining room a brilliant gold. At evening meals my family and I were swathed in its warm glow.

     Growing up in that little country house, nestled in the hills of Castelluccio, Umbria, with its painted walls, glow-the-dark-stars, and tin planes, we grew quite accustomed to how sunsets appeared. Sun peaking out from behind the hills, trying to cast one last glance at our little village before it's bedtime. Streaks of fiery orange and yellows, splashes of hot pinks and vibrant golds. I remember how beautiful it used to look.

     Until that one night when it didn't.

          Sadly, I remembered that sunset most of all.

    It all happened so quickly, within a matter of a few moments. We were eating supper when a loud explosion resonated through the air, shaking the ground, the walls, the windows. I remember glass shattering all around as shelving fell to the floor and in our shock, so did our cups and plates. I heard someone screaming. It may have been me. Mamma's dark blue glass pitcher was in pieces before me on the floor. She loved that vase.

      It grew darker, way too hastily. Thick clouds appeared on the horizon, however it was not the heavens that created them. The winds from the west brought with them an overwhelming wave of the scent of smoke. We were coughing and choking, standing outside as we tried, terrified, to distinguish what was going on.

     I remember seeing an angry blood-red sky behind that massive wall of deep gray and white smoke. The tops of the flames reach desperately upward to grasp the sky as if to burn it as well. I clenched my fist to my chest and prayed it wouldn't burn my beautiful night sky.

     I remember mamma gasping and clutching my hand, holding her three children close- two twelve year olds and one seventeen year old. Any other time I would have complained of being too old to hold her hand. But that night I only held on to her tighter. I took a chance to look away and glanced towards my family members.

     My older sister Alessia's pale face had only become paler, her shaking knees threatening to give out from beneath her.

     Mamma was nearly flush with the ground herself, back leant against the wall of the house to stay steady. I'm still not sure how she managed to remain standing.

    My brother, Ash, usually quite the prankster and comedian, was solemn and, I could swear, even angry. I wasn't sure why at the time. I only felt fear and anxiety.

    Papá, though. I couldn't read his expression as he stared unmoving at the spectacle before us. He looked scared, knowing, and almost ashamed. I know now that at that moment, once he realized that something terrible was coming, it became clear to him that he wasn't going to be able to protect his family.
   
     I wanted so badly to run into his arms, hug him, tell him we were going to be okay. To hold his hand, calloused from working in the gardens all summer, and to smell that familiar cologne that mamma had saved up for months to get him for his birthday.

     Never letting go of mamma's hand, I reached over and slipped my small hand into his large one. He turned his head, gaze softening at my worried expression, and his mouth opened to speak.

     Then the second bomb hit.