He was watching the sun rise. He couldn't watch the sun itself of course. The window was far too high for a scrawny boy of twelve to reach. The light came in through the bars, though, and he could watch as the beautiful glow slowly covered the mud brick wall of the tiny room, the brightness bleaching all the dirt and stains and turning the wall to gleaming white.
He liked the early morning. He liked getting up before all the others and just spending a moment alone, sitting by himself amidst a sea of filthy, stinking people who were less than people. People just like him.
He sighed, trying to resign himself to another day of hard work in the Master's sugar cane fields. No matter how many years he spend harvesting the tough plant, he would never get used to it. Just like he would never get used to the chains around his wrists.
A shadow appeared on the wall before him. It was fuzzy in the bright, but he could still make it out. A bird, tiny, and of a shape different than any of the birds he usually saw flitting around the plantation.
He got up and carefully picked his way through the sleeping bodies, pressing his back against the wall, just beside the glowing patch of light. The bird looked at him, apparently completely unafraid of the tiny boy. And who would be, really? Who would be scared of a pathetic mulatto half-breed, bound and chained to a hundred other worthless souls?
"Fly away, little birdy." The boy whispered, his dark eyes filled with a sorrow beyond his years. "There's nothing but death here."
That's when the cannonball ripped through the space he had been inhabiting not a minute before, blasting his meagre bedding into oblivion and opening a door where there had been none before.
The bird still sat on the window. It looked at him and gave a little hop, as if to say 'Come on already! Let's go!'
Without bothering to glance at the broken chains, the little boy followed.
Sorry for having this be so late! Things have been absolutely crazy. Anyways, here you go! The first chapter in Jack's little melodrama! Hope you like it!