The Meaning Of Peace

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The doves flew away.

The green faded.

A little girl sits alone in the basement, beneath the town library, or what was left of it.

Old and new, borrowed and blue, books surround her. Not giving any luck.

The streets stay dark to hide from them. The basement stays dark to hide from all of them.

From them who started the war and from them who keep everyone in war. Not knowing what side would be worse to be on, this brunette has a heart big enough for whoever, on either side, is willing to keep their own pure and kind.

The reason of why a child is down, alone in this damp and dark room.

A sudden growl of enemy planes can be heard overhead.

She scrambles with her short limbs to the corner of the room, stumbling to avoid the sparse furniture, hiding under the desk.

The world around shakes. Books tumble off the shelves and the desk, littering the floor.

She closes her blue eyes and waits.

She closes her ocean eyes and prays.

It could be minutes or hours that pass, before the screams of the enemy's jet engines silence. Unable to tell the difference anymore, anyone who paints a picture of war and calls it peace is the enemy.

The noise stops for now, but everyone knows it won't stop for too long.

Silence seems to be a privilege the world no longer knows.

Cautiously the pale girl crawls out from under the desk. Making her way between the collapsed novels and towards the fallen chair.

As she rises, the bright yellow of an old dusty book on the desk catches her eye.

Sitting down, grasping the yellow with a puzzled expression. Decorated in bold black block writing, the cover reads 'DICTIONARY'.

Recalling from routine days in the classroom, these books were told to be very important but never used.

The petite girl decides to open the strange and foreign object, to discover what lies in its pages.

Words.

It is just a bunch of words.

Stupid words and their stupid meanings.

People used to think these were important. One in every classroom. A hundred in every library.

"Glad we don't use these anymore", she mumbles in a bored tone, "haven't for years".

She tosses the stupid book over her shoulder decorated with wavy locks and walks away, hoping to find something to help pass the time.

The yellow book falls open on the desk and she stops, out of the corner of her eye she notices something different.

Something circled with a thick bold black marker on the opened page.

Grasping the book once more her crystal eyes read, 'PEACE noun 1. freedom from disturbance; tranquility. 2. a state or period in which there is no war or a war has ended.'

It's written right there.

What she has always known peace to be, freedom from war.

No one has ever believed before. Everyone has always told the curious child to shut up and keep her head down.

"What needs to be done for the peace of our country is winning the war", is what they always say.

But, they are wrong.

This, here, is proof.

This, here, is the answer.

This, here, is peace.

People need to know.

The people need to know.

All the people need to know.

Her small feet stumble backwards in her excited hurry, still holding the golden glory.

The excited child scrambles to the ladder in the corner of the room and starts to climb up to the hatch leading to the outside. A plan already forming in her head. Excited to nail the truth to the lying arches built by lying people. Excited for a change. Excited for-

*CLANG

She rests her heavy head on one of the ladders rungs with a sigh. Almost forgetting.

They locked it.

To keep her out. To keep her away.

They locked her up for saving a life. They locked her up because she saved 'the enemy'.

He was from the other side of the wall. He was from no-man's-land but still she cared for him, even though she was only a child and he could turn on her at any moment. He was wounded and she tended to him. He was hungry and she gave him bread. He was thirsty and she gave him water. He was weak and she gave him shelter. But when they found him...

Red.

They locked up a child for trying to save a man 'with a dirty heart', when in fact their hearts are bloody filthy.

A life is a life, the only difference between them are the shades of red at the end.

But now, helpless and waiting for death, a little girl sits alone in the basement beneath the town library, or what was left of it.

The doves stay away.

The green stays faded.