It was so colorful! The child ran down the street pausing only to gaze into the store's windows. Then she was off again, dodging between legs and threatening innocent lives. So many people were out today! The whole world must be on the streets. So many colors! A piece of something black flew past and the child chased it. It spun here and there as people rushed past. Across the street, over a box, dodge a bicycle, and there! She had it!
It crumbled to pieces as she grabbed it and it left a black mark on her hand. She laughed and whirled back to the direction she came from. Now hundreds of black flakes were floating through the air towards her. She threw her head back and ran back down the street. Another small face peered out of a window and she darted inside and dragged a little boy out. They ran together down the street towards the gathering crowd.
They split up as they reached the crowd and started wriggling their way to the front. The girl squeezed in between legs and through cracks in the crowd. Near the front she stopped by a man and tapped his arm. He looked down, gave a half smile, and lifted her up onto his shoulders. Looking over the people standing packed together, she could see a fire burning in the middle of the street. Another cloud of ashes billowed up as something was thrown into the fire. She grabbed the ashes that floated by and rubbed them into her hands. The man reached up and pulled one of her hands down. He looked at it for a few seconds then shuddered and let it go. She bent her head down to look at his face and he turned his head towards her and whispered, “Ah child, you do not understand. Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
This story was partly inspired by Heinrich Heine's quote that I used as the last sentence of my story.
