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Tuesday 24 September 2019

The treasure box -Burning pages are everywhere!

People are dead . Fire is everywhere. Our homes are ruined. Burning pages are everywhere. 
I can hear screaming and loud footsteps. 


The villagers were scared and the children were crying. People were running away. We don’t know why
someone would do this. This inexcusable tragedy has caused anxiety and depression to everyone.
Books were being destroyed. Except for one, a book that my father had not returned to the library. This
book now became a treasure. Our clothes and belongings were ruined by the fires that were started. We 
came to a realization that we could not stop them, we all decided to head for the village not far away.


We started going and took the things that we had saved from the fire. We all gathered together when we
slept so we could stay warm. We all slept on pathways, behind bushes 
and in the woods.  We saw some other villagers who were leaving and  gathered together so we would all
be together. 


Some people became very ill from inhaling the smoke from the fires earlier and later on passed away.
My father was one of them. The night before he died he told me to keep his treasure safe. I held his hand
throughout the night watching him as he fades away. I am not sad as I know that he is in a better place.
He was a great person and father. He always worked hard to provide.  After we buried him near a tree,
people had very nice things to say about him. I was confused about what happened. We said our last
goodbyes and kept going in case the bombers come to find us.


We had to keep going. I had to leave my luggage behind in order to take my fathers treasure.
We had one last stop at a big linden tree, we were really exhausted. My legs were aching. I decided to
bury the treasure there as it would be safe and when I am older I can return it to the library. 


Time went by and I  was getting older. I kept thinking about the treasure that I had buried. I went looking f
or the linden tree and I finally found it. There was a girl playing around it.  It still looked very big and old. I
started digging until I found it. The little girl asked what it was, I said it was a book about our people. She
asked if she could read it, I gave it to her. She read a few pages. She liked it, she said how mysterious
and cool it was. She had a little trouble with the words. Her dad came to get her and her looked familiar.
We greeted each other, then it finally hit me. That little girl was my best friend’s daughter, My best friend
and I had lost touch and hadn’t contacted each other in years.  We conversed for an hour about what we
had been doing for the past years. He is a builder now.


I went back on the road to return the book to the library and to see what the village looks like after all these
years. It looked different, everything looked new. The library looks good. Looking back at some places
brings me back to all the good and bad memories I had as a child.

Returning the book was the difficult but a relief that I will no longer have to look at the book and remember
the piece of my past I want to leave behind. I am going to explore more of the village and see if I can
remember any more memories.