A Sunset On The Empire

Prolouge

Her dark locks fluttered in the frosty wind, her shabby blue rags and small, torn hairbow flickering as well.

She breathed in the salty air of the chilly wind, her eyes closed, and her mind focused on the splendor of the sunset. She savoured the moment, how the small waves gently brushed her bruised feet, how the sun slowly sank into the tangerine horizon, how her feet crunched the tiny beads of sand that ran through this magical place.

She was free.

Her mind longed for her lingering sense of hope, the sublimity of this perfect epiphany suddenly coming to a point of realization, how her grim memories suddenly faded into the sunset, and the moment suddenly replacing all the sorrow her mind constantly toyed with.

It was perfection, the sun comforting her frail body, and the gorgeous ocean calming her with all of its tranquility. Never had her mind imagined that she could be free of the monsters, the ones who came for her, through this horrid time she was in. This fight. This battle. This war.

War. War. These words replayed in her mind. War. War. War.

But she pushed this aside, breathing in the scrumptious scent of the lovely ocean. None mattered now. Only the ocean.

The purity of this sensation could cast out all the delusions of her lost family, the chimeras of the guards, and this terrible war that corrupted her and caused to lose the only little she had ever acquired.

But all could be lost, her ocean, her fantasies, her freedoms...

‘What are you doing? Come here, little girl!’ She heard so sharply, her ears cringing from the coarseness of the voice, her mind snapping back to the harsh reality, and her eyes suddenly darting to the confused, angered faces of the Japanese men running after her.

‘Go!’ Her mind urged her frantically. ‘Go!”

And so she did.

She ran.

Back into the empire.