Diana was shivering.
She was sitting on the floor of a room devoid of any light or sound, except her heartbeats, and her breathing. She herself hadn’t spoken at all for the week and more she’d been kept there prisoner – How would it matter? ,she’d think, they aren’t going to let me out anyway.
She ran her hands through the scars on her arms and tried to count them. She lost track, like always. The war that ripped apart families and houses in Reading was at its heights of destruction. The war commanded discipline, and since people were not succumbing to that, the army ran out to the cities one morning and set almost everything on fire. They locked every person in one separate room each, and did not allow them to do anything but live. To fulfil that, Diana and all the other thousands of prisoners were given one plate of food every day, which consisted of nothing grand – two pieces of frozen bread and some sort of vegetable gravy.
Diana figured it was enough.
She leaned against a wall and suddenly remembered a song her father had taught when she was very young. Sing, a voice in her head said.
So she sang:
‘We are like lanterns
Spreading the light
Bright’ning each region
And ceasing all fights.’
A tear fell down her cheek.
‘We are like water
Sadness we shed—’
She stopped suddenly.
Someone was singing with her.
-
