Draft Board

Down Pour

Timothy was walking home one day as if he needed to be on time for something special. No one would guess that that something special was not that special. No, he just wished to make it home before the rain started to come down.

No one else thought it would rain that particular day but Timothy knew that it would. He had had a dream about it last night; and his dreams were never wrong when it came to predicting the weather or when something was about to happen.

Timothy was a young boy who lived on his own as the rest of his family had died several years back when the town had witnessed a class five typhoon off the east side of the island. A good percent of the people who lived on the island had had their loved ones taken by the typhoon.

And many of the survivors lived on their own supporting themselves. No help would come from the outside as the island was protected against those who wish to come to its land. Not one soul had been able to find the island in the last three thousand years. They prayed every day to their kami that they would never be found by the outside either.

Years ago when they had been shut off from the rest of the world they were told that it was because others were fighting and destroying everything around them. The world was at war with itself and if they were to escape the fighting they were not to allow anyone to know that they existed.

This became hard some years when they would find small boats that had been sunk or floating out in the ocean without anyone aboard. Some of the island people had started to believe that the world outside the island didn't exist or that they should leave the confines of the island and see what the world was like today; instead of letting their fear stop them from seeing if they were the only humans left on earth.

Timothy Acre was a young boy of about fifteen years old and he had lost his family to the great typhoon seven years ago. With over seventy five percent of the island residences killed, MIA, or washed out into the sea there was no one to take in all the people who were left. Everyone had to fend for themselves.

Timothy having never fully been accepted by the rest of the islands people for his father was unknown lived out on a cliff overlooking the sea. He lived up in the lighthouse alone. He had once lived here with his mother, stepfather, and little half-sister Nana. But during the Great Typhoon his father had been out at sea helping the local fishermen as he was one of three chief over the island. He'd been killed as soon as the typhoon hit.

His mother had left him in the house and went to pick up his sister from school and neither of them had ever come back. He had heard later that the school house had been swept away by a giant tide. All that was left was the swing set.

Saying that Timothy was surprised about the storm wasn't true because he had warned his mother several days before that the storm was coming and they should make preparations. He had even told the three chiefs about the storm and none of them had believed him. The only two who thought enough about him to believe was his little sister; and his best and only friend Alice.

Alice had been on her way to her house where she lived with her grandparents when she was swept away by the storm.

In their early childhood Timothy and Alice met when some of the local boys decided to pick on Tim. Alice had come to the rescue and the boys had fled. Alice was at the time renowned for her tomboyish ways and the many fights she'd gotten into. Her parents had died one day out on the sea as they were fishing. The boat washed ashore with no one on it. None of the other fishing boats had seen or heard anything. The Thatcher family had suddenly vanished leaving only their baby girl Alice behind as she stay with her grandmother and grandfather.

Y'!}