"Hush, stay silent."
"Let us run away before they come to us."
"Stay back and keep quiet."
Gravel bit my palms as I used them to prop myself up as my sister pushed me back into 'safety'. We were hunched down in the small cramped space under a stranger's house, the smell of moist earth, making its way into my nose as I brushed off the remaining pebbles clinging on my hands. My sister, Nami, kept peeking between the stacks of wood leaning against the side of the house, looking for any sign of the marauders seen advancing a few miles towards our city a few minutes ago. The other children from the orphanage were taken by the elders to try and send them out of the city to escape, but the two of us got separated from them because of the forceful flow of the crowd.
It has been a few minutes since we decided to hide in this tiny space, and the people running around us had decreased, leaving behind a cloud of dust and panic in their wake. I nudged my sister to complain about the throbbing weariness in my legs, from sitting hunched all this time, when we heard the sirens wail across the steadying air. The sound vibrated in my ears and with it, the sound blood rushing through me as my heart threatened to beat its way out of my chest.
The sound seemed to get louder with my every breath. My sister grabbed me with her cold hands and whispered instructions on how we will run and what route we will take to try and escape but all I heard was the clanking of metal and chains. She pulled me to the other side of the house, where I can see a lot of trees and bushes painted with the shadows of dusk. We crawled towards the pale gray light, pebbles once again biting my skin and scraping my knees while moist soil caked in my fingernails. I can see cobwebs getting caught on my sister's braided hair, the spiders crawling onto her back.
We got out at last onto someone else's backyard. My sister grabbed my arm to help me get on my feet. Her dress was now dusty and dirty while my shirt and pants now looked more like rags than clothes. I was dusting off my cropped hair when I heard a muffled gasp beside me. My sister was looking up the sky, with her hands on her mouth, eyes wide and unbelieving. I looked up as well and saw it: dusk was not the only one shading down the place but the shadows of large floating things blocking out the remaining sunlight, a sight so familiar from history books we were taught to read aloud in the orphanage, yet so new.
Metal ships glide across the sky, some up high, some down low. They looked like metal distorted fishes, with chains being thrown down the sides, explaining the clanking sounds earlier. Large creatures climbed over the sides of the ships and started sliding down onto the ground. From afar, they looked like large bulky humans, but does not move like one. They move a bit slower as if dragged down by the heavy weight of muscle and weapons hugging their backs. 'They must be from another side of the land' I thought, eyeing the green lights sparkling on their ships, and the green glint of weapons. I was jolted from my inspection when my sister shook me a bit and started pointing into the clump of forest trees to our right.
"We have to run, Nai, run, now!"
And we did, but before we reach the tangled and wrangled roots, I took another look behind me and saw one of the usurpers take one live torch from the side of the house we were just hiding in a few heartbeats ago. The blue flame of our city spitted embers as he swung it above his head and brought it down on the coal tar he must have splashed along the walls because the moment the torch came into contact with the wooden wall, blue flame exploded as if it came to life.
"Run faster!", my sister called out. I focused my eyes on the tangle of roots and concentrated on not tripping. I held back the tears threatening to spill out of my eyes, because young as I am at the age of 8, we were taught that boys were not allowed to shed tears. We reached a shallow river and crossed it in a rush, water splashing around our ankles, the cold numbing my feet. We heard shouts from afar which only made us run faster. A few sprints later, the ground started to rise as we reach the mountain. It got harder to climb the steep side and a look of frustration crossed my sister's features.
"Let's just climb up high on a tree and stay there for a while." I suggested.
"Good thing I have a monkey for a brother then." she joked.
"I think, this is not a good time for jokes." I started looking for a tree with heavy foliage and started climbing up, pausing every now and then to look down and help my sister. I may be younger but I do climb quite excellently. When we reached a good height, shaded by branches, we settled down against the trunk and took some time to wipe off the sweat trickling down our faces and catching out breath. My sister looked at me the pointed at a small opening behind me, like a window made of leaves. Smoke rose up from our once beloved city, the sky now mostly dark. Blue flames leapt here and there while green spots of light still hovered on top of it.
Now that the panic had lessened only did I started thinking about the people and home that we have lost and the unforgiving future that awaits us. How we will get our food, our shelter, our survival.
*Image from vfxmagazine.com, from "King and Lionheart", Of Monsters and Men.