Shards

Chapter 1 - Dust

  Three gunshots. All aimed at me, all ricocheting with no miss. Broken glass. Screams – silence. I gazed at the long legs and closed my teary eyes. One more glimpse. It was all over.

  The only remaining sound was the music of the insects with a background of free oxygen mixed with the scent of wasted shells. It was a field. No massacre was laid out. Only one homicide.

¶

  “I honestly have no idea why you brought me here or why it is so important. It’s only a park,” he says, rolling his eyes and huffing at me.

  “Did you not know? The victims of the Fourth War were buried here!” I say in disbelief.

  “What Fourth War?”

  “A far time away. History. You should know.”

  “What’s a war to begin with?”

  I blink at him a few times. He doesn’t know what a war was? He’s older, so he should have known… apparently good at history. ‘I’m good at History’ he says. But knows about History he doesn’t.

  “Do teachers at our school teach you about war at all?” I narrow my eyes at him.

  “Do yours?”

  “No,” I admit. I am fourteen, brunette, have blue eyes. I carry the name of Blanca. I suppose I am a curious person, but there’s nothing that I can do about that, right? Being honest, I don’t know what a war was in spite of expecting Jurian to know it. But I am sure that at some point in time war existed.

  “I would’ve known about it if it was important,” Jurian shrugs arrogantly, running his fingers through limestone which – I suspect – is a gravestone. I walk around it, pretending to only look at it out of bored interest, and go back to walk beside him again. No name engraved on the gravestone. No date. I begin to doubt any possibilities of it being a gravestone at all.

  Jurian narrows his eyes at me suspiciously. He’s two years older than me, is taller than me, but at times I convinced myself that I am still smarter than him – or just more intelligent, depending on the situation. He could be dumb at times (just like any guy at all) but he’s a fine friend. His hair is dark brown, almost black, his eyes green. He doesn’t look exactly masculine, but it’s obvious that he’s a man.

  “What?” He frowns at me, breaking my thoughts.

  “Eh? What ‘what’?”

  “You’ve been staring at me.”

  “Sorry. Thinking.”

  “You like me so much that you need to stare at my face to think?”

  “You’re getting too full of yourself,” I say, grinning at him. “But do you seriously not know what World War Four was?”

  “Uh-uh. What is it?”

  I don’t really know what exactly it was, either, but I explain it to the best of my ability anyway: “When countries fight over something. I don’t know much about it.”

  “Right. So the people of the country just argue? I don’t see any point in that.”

  “Neither do I,” I say.

  We stare at the gravestones for a while, talking of nonsensical things. It is the beginning of autumn, the grass still bright green and the leaves on the trees still intact. The sun is shining brightly, some of its shine finding a way through the leaves, creating a beautiful pattern of shadow and light. There are a lot of trees; most of the park area is shadowed, some gravestones cruelly tilted to the side by a couple of the elephant plants. Most of the gravestones are arranged in an uneven row, eaten on by erosion. They look like they are made of small stones, rough and unfriendly in texture, as if they became bitter elders angered by the unfeeling years.