When Mathias was younger his mother would often read him stories.
Placed on the highest shelf of an old oak bookcase that was sitting in the livingroom was a well used, leather bound, copy of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. The ugly duckling was always his favorite. Over the years he asked his mom to read it to him more times than he could count. When he was younger she would indulge him and they would spend the evening studying faded words under the candle light. However, as he got older his mother left him to read his own stories. Late into the night -far later than he should have- Mathias would reread the words of the ugly duckling, the little match girl, the emperor's new clothes, and multiple others.
Though as he became a teenager things like reading children's stories in the dark became unheard of and odd. Mathias stopped reading stories, and the book stayed at the top of his bookcase, gathering dust and withering away with age. Things like girls and school became more common to talk about than people turning into sea foam or ducks turning into swans. Towards the beginning Mathias would give in and read the stories from time to time, but even this eventually stopped and he forgot about them all together.
Around this time is when the war started.
Bombs were dropped on Belgium by the Austrians, and eventually the whole of north western Europe was involved. Within the past twenty years the world had been experiencing a major fossil fuels shortage. Mines and drilling sites began to dry up, and with the world still mostly dependant on these resources countries got desperate. Belgium was one of the only European countries with still running coal mines, so Austria bombed it's military capitals and invaded.
Mathias was only fourteen by the time of the attack. He remembers coming home from school to see his mom sitting in front of the tv, a worried look on her face. She told him to stay home the next day, and Mathias didn't have a problem with that. The less time in school the better. But the enjoyment was short lived, two months later his father was drafted to help german soldiers in Rostock. Six months after that he returned to them in a body bag.
His mother was hysterical, crying and fighting her way through the soldiers who brought him home, desperate to see her husband for the last time. When she got there she hurried to unzip the bag, ready to hug the body of her husband, sadly she never got that far. It didn't take her long to turn away and vomit onto the floor, Mathias almost did the same. In the bag was the burnt and melted corps of what was no doubt his father. Half his face was completely gone. The skin of his ear seems to have melted into the side of his head, his cheek was burned a flaky and dark charcoal black, and his forehead was dark red. A color that skin should never be. However, the worst out of all of it was his eye, the socket that once housed a familiar blue was empty, and the skin was peeled away to expose the white bone underneath. To this day Mathias still has trouble sleeping peacefully at night, and to be completely honest, he's not sure if he ever will.
Luckily, he was barely fifteen when his father died. Being the only able bodied man in his family meant that he would be forced to fight, though he was too young for that, so for the next several years he got to stay home with his mother. After his father's funeral, Mathias' mother was never the same. The homemade lunches that he would always bring to school stopped getting made. His clothes were left dirty in bins for days on end. His mother was usually the one who did chores like that around the house, but it wasn't long before he ran out of clean clothes to wear. He learned how to clean his shirts himself. In the evening the nice smell of a freshly cooked meal was just a memory. And often times, he didn't even need to press his ear against the door to hear the muffled sobs of his mother on the other side.
Maybe if it was a different time Mathias would have been angry at her. He would have screamed and argued, slamming his fist against the wall. However with the war and the death of his father, he no longer had the energy to fight. He would cook his own dinner. Always making sure to leave a plate sitting on the dining room table, just in case his mother felt like eating. She never did. Mathias would pack his own lunches and wash his own clothes, forcing himself to be happy with the less than mediocre job that he was able to do.
At times like these the old dusty bookshelf seemed just as appealing to him as it did when he was a kid. The magic returned to the beat up leather bound book, though instead of promising him adventure, the stories promised him relief. The words of the ugly duckling held his escape from the hate and fear that seemed to hang in the air like a fog. It refused to leave the danish people alone, making everything worse as the happy world of Mathias' childhood was striped away one day at a time.
When the Austro-Russian forces successfully invaded germany, it was inevitable that fighting would move to Denmark. Two days latter Copenhagen was attacked. Fire rained from the sky as Mathias and his mother were rushed to the nearest shelter. It was oddly captivating, as if fate was cruel enough to force you to watch as everything you have ever known was burned to the ground. A second wave of planes were flying overhead just as he was pushed down into the cellar that was supposed to save their lives. Mathias doubted that the thin layers of concrete would protect them at all, but it was enough.
After hours of crying and shivering in the cold as fire bombs fell from the air, Mathias and his mother were free to go. He never ran out of a place so fast. The ground would shake as the bombs dropped, causing his normally blond hair to be covered in a gray dust. An especially close bomb landed what some said could not have been more than a mile away, causing the lights to go out. Desperately Mathias felt the people around him, looking for his mother. He wished she would comfort him like she did before the war. He wished she would hold him in her arms and whisper to him that everything was going to be okay. That they would go home to see nothing destroyed, and that his father would greet the two of them when they returned.
But when he felt the soft fabric of his mother's dress he knew his hopes were useless. She was shaking, desperately trying to muffle her sobbes. Mathias knew that he shouldn't have expected anything else. His mom was just as scared as he was. With every hiccup and cry that came from her mouth he had to grit his teeth together in order to keep from yelling out. He's the child! Why does he have to be the one to take care of her. It's not like she is the only one experiencing loss. It was his father who died.
A breath that Mathias didn't know he was holding in finally escaped his lungs. It was relieving. The door that sat at the top of the stairs leading down to the cellar cracked open. Light flooded the small cold room, revealing the tear stained faces of the people around him. Two men who were old enough to escape the draft began helping people out of the cellar one by one. Apparently the bomb raid stopped, however, it went on long enough to cause serious damages. Just like Mathias thought, their shelter was lucky to still be there. When he heard the news he was expecting there to be damages, but as he exited the stairs and reached the top he didn't know what to think.
At first it was hard to see because of the thick layer of dust and smoke that was in the air. It burned his lungs as he breathed in. Forcing him to pull up the front of his shirt to cover his mouth. If he didn't cry in the cellar now he did. Pieces of building and rubble littered the streets. Trees that once held brilliant green leaves were charged black and grey. Places that he knew as a kid were gone, and now, Mathias knew that his dad would not greet him on the way home. He knew that he didn't have a home to go to anymore.
One of the men who let them out of the cellar placed his hand on Mathias' back in some form of mock comfort. "Why did this have to happen?" The old man looked over at him, his face covered in grime and soot.
"Because people have a tendency to forget that others are human being too." Mathias didn't know what he meant, but the look in the man's eyes held no ounce of doubt so he didn't ask again. Instead he walked hand in hand with his mother. The two of them praying to any God that would listen that their home would still be standing when they got back.