We should have realized that Dad's unfortunate fate meant more than the loss of a valued family member, and though this was a bad time to talk about money, a massive blow to our household income once the small sachet of notes given to us by the postman along with the letter as a consolation prize from the regiment leader who valued his best man highly had been used up.
No more of mum's perfectly cooked pancakes on Sunday, and no evening glass of milk to dull the feeling of emptiness that never seemed to ease even in my sleep. And no trip to the hardware store to pick up that pane of glass we needed to repair the broken window which was bound to let the cold, winter air in when November came. Which was soon.
My mommy's seemingly unbreakable smile was looking more and more dull and forced with each passing day. The bedtime stories stopped too, when I insisted she go to sleep early after seeing her stumble through the door after coming back from work, and nearly crashing head first into a cupboard near the doorway once. It was clear that sleep had died too for us, when daddy surrendered his life.
"Things could not get worse." I would even say out loud, trying my best to smile as I said it in a desperate attempt to set us at ease. And that was the second biggest blunder I ever made in my stupid life. The second dumbest thing I ever let slip because of my loose tongue.
I never really knew if the holy man some called god really existed. So I never really knew whether what came next was a punishment for being so fickle with my mouth, or a cruel joke that man chose to play on us since he was sadistic and liked seeing pain and misery more than he did happiness.
Or perhaps he just worked in mysterious ways, like the family down the lane who defended his existence kept saying he did. I didn't have the answer.
But it happened. We should have known, should have expected it all along but alas, perhaps the untimely demise of daddy had extinguished our lights to reality. Perhaps we let our emotions swallow us whole, and turned our back to what really would happen now that the war we had been hearing about time and time again was not going well.
Something about the people on the other side upgrading their arsenals. And something else to do with there being a lot more seeds around than before, since I clearly heard the words "Increased radicalization" being discussed by a group of neighbors who had gathered outside one morning in the square. Either way whatever it was, it really wasn't good.
It caught us by surprise.
I woke one morning feeling groggy and dizzy to the sounds of what seemed to be an abnormally loud roar of an engine of some sort. Surprised, I looked out of the window to find that the moonless night sky had still not brightened.
That was odd, I thought to myself, who could be out driving at so late an hour. And why was the noise getting louder and louder.
I glanced over to my mom's room to find her still asleep. She had become a very heavy sleeper since the news of daddy had arrived, and the stress of how she would now finance the household alone until I grew up enough to find myself a job really seemed to have weighed down on the poor woman.
Something in me that day made me make a fool. A moronic, selfish fool. Perhaps it was the grogginess of being woken up at two or three in the morning, perhaps it was the nihilistic view of life that began to blind me more and more to reality now that I realized that we would never be the happy family we once were. Or maybe a seven year old girl had no idea that something as simple as a revving engine meant that a convoy of large, armored vans each one packed with masked men was on its merry way down the street and that any sensible man in with even a shred of sanity about him, would have dashed away as quickly as his legs would carry him ignoring the fact he was wearing nothing on but a pair of threadbare pajamas and hadn't even put his shoes on yet.
But I was clearly not the sane sensible man in my imagination that day, since I yawned, stretched myself and crawled back into bed thinking that if my mother had not been alarmed by the outlandish noises outside that there was no cause for me to panic either.
How dead wrong I soon turned out to be.
Just seconds later, the noises had gotten even louder and a riot of blinking lights lit the blackness of the early morning sky. Incoherent shouts rang out from outside as my mother was finally roused from her deep sleep, and rushed into my room.
"What's going on mom." I managed to ask, yawning loudly as I clutched my aching head.
Instead of receiving an answer to my question, my mom thrust a pair of jeans and a jacket onto my bed. "Get dressed Lightning. Get dressed. Quickly." she shouted, more desperate than angry. Stifling another drowsy yawn, I began to change into the clothes as best I could, taking a while because of my shaking hands and blurry sight.
"But what is happening?" I asked once more, as I finished zipping up the jacket.
Mommy opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off, by another deafening roar of an engine, this time far louder. A few cries were heard in the distance, before a loud, ominous scream. Mysterious voices that I couldn't quite make out accompanied the whole ordeal.
"Go now!" my mum pleaded, motioning me out of my room and downstairs.
"But why?" I was about to ask, when she clapped a hand over my mouth, drowning out the noise.
"Just go, please! GO!" she begged once more, and I could have sworn that even in the dark unlit room, I could see a trail of tears spurting onto my mothers weary face.
"But what about you mom? I don't want to leave you behind" I managed to say, in my blind panic which this sudden turn of events had instilled in me.
"I'll be fine" she insisted, looking through me as she spoke "Now go. Downstairs, out the back door. Now!"
I took one last look at my mom, realizing full well that she was lying to my face despite being the one person I thought I could always count on and trust since Daddy was no longer with us. And that knowledge made my respect for this selfless woman grow several times that day as I followed her instructions and sprinted downstairs, and unlatched the back door, which opened to reveal a trail leading into a eerie forest full of tall trees.
As I reached the backdoor, stumbling slightly since I was not wearing any shoes, a loud banging at the door could be heard, followed by a shout which sounded something like "Open, now!". Another scream.
I felt tempted to cry at the prospect of being left orphaned and abandoned, with no one to miss me. It truly was a terrible idea, since unlike many I knew had it worse than I, my parents were mild, and honest people without a single bad bone in their entire body. They had confided in me, their daughter, rather than pushing their secrets under the mat. And their whole life had been spent so that I could be safe and happy.
To call them good, and respectable humans would still be an understatement after the kindness and unconditional love they had shown in the short time I had them as my parents would not be right to me. They were more than just people to me. I took one last look at mom as I stepped out into the cold, wet grass outside. And saw in her and my late daddy, two guardian angels who should have gone to that place called heaven a long time ago.
I never truly knew if that holy man called god who everyone kept talking about actually existed or if he was real, whether he really was the altruistic, reliable figure we all supposed him to be. But as I sprinted clumsily barefoot, putting my trust in the shadowy darkness to provide me cover, I prayed silently to the holy man named god to take his angel to be with him once more in his lovely home in heaven where she belonged if he was there and could hear me.
My thoughts were interrupted as the banging became louder still, and I hastened my run ignoring the pain in my feet as they brushed the branch littered ground.
Several times I very nearly tripped as I stumbled in almost complete darkness in the thick undergrowth, but somehow I scrambled and scrambled over logs, roots and rocks as I sped forward, only stopping when my breaths finally degenerated into ragged gasps and wheezes, and the pain in my feet became too sharp to shrug off any more that I finally came to a stop and considered my surroundings.
I had made my way up a steep slope and the path through which I had come was covered mostly by a thick layer of trees, save for one small gap where the trees were parted, leaving a small gap marking the entrance to the narrow trail that led into the woods.
Unable to resist the growing morbid curiosity any longer, I dared a look back. The sky was dark and moonless, but from my position on the hills, and the blindingly bright set of lights someone had put on. I could see almost perfectly what was going on once I had climbed a tree to get a better view, confident that I was far enough into the thick shelter the woods offered that whoever was banging on the door would not come and look for me.
I had suspected this all along, but now my worst fears were confirmed as I caught a horrid glimpse of my dear mommy being led away by a group of large men. Even despite the blur in my vision and how far away I had put myself between them, I could see as one of the men turned to face my direction, that his face was obscured by a mask so that only his eyes were visible.
His gaze did not shift like I hoped it would, instead it stayed fixed in my direction. I could hear words being shouted, though I couldn't quite discern what. But all this while, that one man who had turned to face the woods from which I made my escape seemed to step closer and closer to me. I couldn't tell if he had seen me or not, and I didn't want to find out as I jumped down, nearly spraining my ankle as I hit the ground with a thud and began to slink away quickly with my heart in my mouth.
Sweat coated my cold, shivering form, and my heartbeat felt like a maddened drum as it got louder and quicker with each step forward I took. Could that man hear the sound of my heart from where he was? Twigs snapped beneath me, as I took step after step forward not knowing or caring where I would end up. All that mattered was getting far away from here.
But even as I took a right at the next intersection, I found myself crying silently as I thought of the unthinkable things they would do to mom. It wouldn't be good, that much was clear and for a second, I felt tempted to run back the way I came screaming for them to take me as well.
Only the desperate plea, in her voice as she hurried me outside kept me moving forward.
But what did they want with her? It was fair enough that they would want my dad, since he had made himself a target for them, and even then I hated them for what they had done with him. But my mom?
A young, single woman whose only goal was to see her daughter, her only family grow up safe and happy and had done nothing whatsoever to prompt a grudge from even the neighbors who admired her gentle voice and hard working attitude. She hadn't gone to the place where daddy went, and as far as I knew, she hadn't killed like daddy had.
And it was there, in that clearing where my legs gave out and I finally gave myself up to exhaustion that I asked myself a question that till this day, I'm just as distant from a satisfactory answer as I was when I first thought of it. "Just what was their goal?".
Just what could they gain from taking away the last family poor Lightning Dust had left in her life, so that Lightning had no where to go even if she lived. Why would people kill a woman that killed and wounded no one. A woma who always gave her daughter more than half of their loaf of bread at the breakfast table.
It was as sleep overtook me and I slowly began to drop off, that my fear of what would happen if they found me and took me along with my mom slowly turned to hatred as I clenched my fists. I didn't care that killing was wrong anymore. I didn't care that friendship was a better solution than violence.
I cared that my mom, my Hope Sandreams was gone, and so were my chances of a bright and happy future with my one remaining parent. I cared that if those men in masks were left to do as they liked, more children would be left like me to wander alone in darkness and cold.
And I broke into a sob as sleep washed over me, as I wailed for something, anything or anyone for me to follow.
And oblivious to me then, as I woke the next morning with clenched teeth and dried tear tracks over my dirty face, my future had been set in stone and nothing anyone said or did could change where I was doomed to end up.