Insight to Your Past

This chapter is basically a chapter to help you readers know a bit more about the past and present of the character. It helps to set the scene for the upcoming chapters which I will be hopefully posting once every 1-2 weeks, most likely at a week-end. Favourite, follow and review if you like. Criticism welcome.

Chapter 1- The Midst of the War

28th January 1940

The streets were deserted. There was nobody about in any direction I looked. The buildings were crumbling, desolate. Craters were gouged into the road as though some sort of bomb had fallen there in the past. The reason it looked like that was because, in fact, a bomb had fallen there.

It was dark, no lights except for those of the searchlights in the main city shone. This made it hard to see the path I traveled. Just because the streets were deserted did not mean that it was quiet. The air raid sirens blared out across London and planes droned across the sky.

This wasn't a good time to be out. My feet splashed through puddles as I sprinted across the roads, heading towards my home. My breathing was ragged and uneven but that was to be expected, I had just ran about a mile in these pitiful conditions.

The sudden boom of a bomb caught me off guard and I ducked behind a wall to avoid the spray of shrapnel. I had refused going into one of the public shelters, no matter how much they had protested. I shouldn't have left home in the first place.

The old, Victorian style townhouse soon came into view and I sped up, determination burning through me. The door creaked as I opened it but it was barely audible above the noises outside. "Tommy!" I called, trying to get my voice heard above the horribly loud bombs and the screeching siren.

My feet carried me towards the bedroom I shared with my younger brother, Thomas- Tommy for short. Shattered glass was dispersed all over the ground and I made an effort to avoid it as I stepped carefully to the wardrobe. Swinging open the wardrobe, I immediately felt a small form hit into my torso. I held him for a few moments before lifting him into my arms and rushing down the stairs. The place I really didn't want to be in that moment was outside but we had no choice to make it to the shelter.

"I'll get you safe," I promised my brother as I ran across the grass and shoved open the corrugated iron panel that we used as a door to the dugout. I put him on the single mattress and replaced the iron over the door, giving a sigh of relief.

The shelter was tiny, only about two metres in any direction. On one of the walls was a rack of shelves that held a few measly cans and some water provisions. In the far corner was a bucket for... well... business. Then there was the mattress pushed up against the side wall, a blanket strewn across it. It wasn't much but at least we were safe.

I crouched next to my brother and took his face in my hands, studying him for any cuts or wounds.

"Are you hurt?" I asked him gently, looking into his big, blue eyes.

It settled me when he shook his head and I pulled into a hug. He rested his head on my shoulder, his breathing light and calm. My hands combed through his ragged brown hair as I eased myself.

In a way, I was much like a mother to my brother. Our own mother was always off helping out with raid patrols and was hardly ever home. That left me to look after Tommy. I was the only one there to look out for him.

My older brother, Oliver, was out fighting the war. We got letters from him every couple of months or so. I didn't know where he was based. He moved around too much and didn't bother to mention it in his letters. Mostly, he focused on asking us questions of what was happening here.

The problem was, Tommy and I were scheduled to be evacuated soon. The address of the place we were going to stay in was unknown to us so we weren't able to send it to Ollie. That meant we would no longer be receiving letters from our brother.

Finally, I let go of Tommy and kissed his forehead softly. The eight-year old gave me a soft smile and I found myself smiling back. Now that I knew he was okay, I was able to finally locate the correct muscles in my lips to turn up their edges.

Standing, I walked to the shelf and took down a tin of soup. The tin popped as I opened it and I took a spoon from the lower shelf. Taking a quick spoonful of it, I dumped it in my mouth and passed the rest to Tommy. I knew he'd be hungry because of how hungry I was. I wouldn't eat until morning though. The supplies in here were low as it was.

As I had expected, Tommy wolfed down the soup as if it were the first meal he'd had in months. Pretty soon, he dumped the tin at the end of the mattress and lay down. "Night, Maggie" he murmured in his regularly quiet and almost never heard voice.

"Goodnight, Tom" I uttered in return as I set myself against the wall, my head lolling on my shoulder.

My eyes stayed on him as his eyes closed. The poor child suffered with terrible nightmares so I regularly stayed up all night to watch him. His breathing grew heavy and slow and I knew he had drifted off. My own lids drooped and I tried to stay awake but was unable to, falling asleep myself.

I woke to the sound of Tommy's mumbling as he tossed and turned on the mattress. Yawning, I got up and moved over to him. Laying on the mattress next to him, I pulled him close and ran my hand through his hair, over and over again. "Shh" I hushed. "It's alright."

After a short while, he settled and his breathing evened again. That was my queue to sleep.