Chapter 1- a mountain range of rubble

The girl sensed me there, I'm sure. She looked up at me. Her sobbing ceased. She opened her mouth to ask me something. Whatever that question was, I will never know. There was only one word she could say, and she cried it. She screamed it, sobbed it, threw her heart up into her mouth and bellowed it.

One huge, heartfelt word,

screamed by a little girl

Papa

Her sobbing resumed. Her little body shook with the power of a human heart breaking.

The rules

The rules said I had to leave that little girl, sobbing, amid a mountain range of rubble, clutching the body of a tall, rusting-eyed man, abandoned by everyone she had ever loved or cared about.