Written by minnie amarana#0669

Blue. Blue was the only color in her mind. The serenity of the wind lightly rustling the leaves. The Great River rippling around the tall trees. The quiet peace was all that the 10-year-old girl wanted in life. That's all that a 10-year-old girl should want in life. It's all that the 10-year-old girl had ever known in life. Even the feeling of lying against the brown tree trunk under the green leaves was blue. The calmness of the world could never be broken.

The blue, however, would never be eternal, not with the flashes of red and brown that started to enter the girl's world. A 10-year-old doesn't understand the selfish salmon pink world of politics. Then she definitely couldn't understand how such a pale color in her head turns into the very real dark red in front of her eyes when she starts to walk home. The smoke suddenly starting to rise over the large landscape and people frantically running into her safe haven wasn't on her list of things to enjoy.

Despite the logic of following everyone into the forest, she ran straight into town, weaving around her terrified neighbors, until she reached her own collapsing house. It had been dilapidated for years, but never could she imagine that it would be completely flattened. But that was a very real possibility with the explosions rocking the town. The house didn't have too much more times as flames started to get closer to her corner of the street.

"Dad!" she started screaming. She ripped open the door and started running around the house. "Dad, where are you? We need to get out."

She checked every room. Every bathroom. Every corner. Even the closets. No trace of anyone. She was finishing checking the bedrooms when there was a loud bang right outside the house. The force shook the whole building and shattered all the windows. All the valuables were still in the kitchen on her bookshelf, so they hadn't abandoned the house yet. There was only one more place to check: the attic.

She ran back out to the shed and picked up the ladder. The attic door didn't have its own, her dad never installed it, so she had to balance it into the house and up the stairs. She was too focused on opening it up and pulling on the attic door to smell the smoke curling around the house.

When she opened the attic door, she was met with a huge cloud of smoke. Shaking, the scared girl covered her mouth with her shirt and kept going.

"Mom, Dad!" she shrieked again. She heard some light coughing behind her.

She whipped around and ran saw them, but also finally saw the source of the smoke. The front of the house was clipped in the explosion and quickly going up in flames. Her parents had been sitting in that corner, hiding from the planes when the bombs went off. Other than the few coughs from her father, both of them were completely out. She didn't know what to do. There was no way she could pull them out, but she wasn't ready to die too.

"Think Amarana, think," she told herself. "There has to be a way to do this."

But she took too long to make a decision. The house cracked, and the whole front collapsed, including the floor below which had held her ladder. The floor holding her parents fell and created a new cloud of fire. They couldn't have been too unconscious, because she soon heard the bloodcurdling screams curl up with the flames. The fear started to course through her veins again. She backed into the corner that had yet to be charred, but it wouldn't be long before it was gone too.

She tried to slow her breathing. She knew the panicked breathing would make her survival chances worse, but she couldn't help it. There was no escape. A fall from this high up would paralyze or kill her, but trying to make it to the stairs was a certain burn sentence. As the flames licked closer, she closed her eyes and accepted her fiery fate in her corner.

They came from the bottom, weakening what little structure remained in the house. The little tower started to rock without any support, before finally giving in. But she didn't have the wherewithal to realize what was happening anymore. She didn't know she was lying with broken legs on the ground. She didn't know the roof was covering her with a blanket.

She didn't know her body was being charred just like the wood that used to be her house.