Second Chance Matches | ONC 2020

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣

★ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ★

After the screams came silence. Sabine stood rooted to her spot for a few minutes afterwards trying to process what she had just experienced. Why was she brought here? To be reminded of everything she had lost? To destroy her spirit? Or to teach her a lesson that she still hadn't understood? The questions kept stacking up against the answers and pretty soon the pile would topple. 

Sabine glanced back at the dark tunnel that led into her childhood home. Even though she hadn't made it past the doorway, she couldn't bring herself to go back inside. She had seen everything that she needed to. She preferred to leave the house in the memory it had first presented itself in; the bright red bricks and rainbow of flowers. She preferred to remember it back when it was alive. 

She turned her back on the house she had grown up in for the last time. Sabine had only been in her village for a short time but she was already growing tired of it. Sabine had missed this place dearly ever since she was taken, but part of her wished she had never returned. She would have rather never been back than seen it like this; burned, beaten, broken. 

Sabine's plan was to raid the shops in search of food and supplies and then head onto the next town. She worried that if she stayed the nostalgia might once more overwhelm her and bring her back to more miserable memories. She could only experience her father dying so many times before she'd break. Well, break more.

She struck out in the first shop she entered but the second fared better results. Sabine found a backpack and filled it with nonperishable foods, a pocket knife, and a change of clothes. Maria had been kind enough to buy Sabine some clothes at the market while she had been living there, but Sabine hadn't been able to grab them before the match brought her here and the outfit she was currently wearing was dirty and singed. A sudden thought came to her just as she was about to leave the store and she quickly backtracked to grab one last thing: a new box of matches. 

Sabine shrugged the heavy backpack over her shoulders and stared down the road before her. She tried to focus her thoughts on what laid ahead instead of what she was leaving behind, but the first step was still the hardest. Thankfully the second step was a little easier, and the third even easier than the last. Before long she had made decent ground and her village was nearly invisible behind her. 

She walked for about fifteen miles before a new village entered her vision. Sabine still wanted to put more ground between herself and her village, but she decided to stop to get some rest. The sky cast a golden glow upon the crumbling town, which had also been raided by the Germans. The yellow hues faded into pinks, purples, and blues as the sun descended to the horizon and the moon took its place. 

Sabine investigated the first mostly-intact building she saw when she stepped foot on the main street and was welcomed into the crumbling facade of an abandoned library. Row after row of shelves were toppled on top of each other like dominoes and a musty smell filled the air. Most of the books were scorched but Sabine found one among the ruins that was salvaged from the destruction. Sabine brushed the ash off the cover and held it under a fading ray of sunlight that shone down upon her from a crack in the ceiling to find a book of fairy tales in her hands. 

Sabine recognized the book, her father used to read it to her and her sisters before they'd go to bed. Her favorite had always been Cinderella, a story about a kind maiden that was treated poorly by her step-mother and step-siblings until she's granted a wish by a fairy godmother and whisked into a life of magic and happiness. She had always dreamed of her own pair of shiny glass slippers and a handsome prince to dance the night away with.