Ahhh! These are all really short, I have a lot of these little bits already written, so I'll try to post 2 a day. I just want them to be posted in certain parts.
When we were kids Ziva was best friends with the boy who lived next door. His name was Naji and he was an Arab Muslim. Not a day went by without Ziva and Naji playing outside, they never included me. They climbed trees and shared ice cream, did each other's homework and blew bubbles on hot summer nights. It certainly seemed like a fairy tale friendship until Naji was killed by an air strike along with his mother when Ziva was 12.
My father came in and announced it nonchalantly around noon and said something to the tune of: "There is nothing we can do, don't dwell on it, Zivalah. These things happen sometimes."
Ziva blinked back tears for hours after he left, maybe she was trying to prove something to herself and to him, but we were trained from a young age to hold back our emotions. Our housekeeper baked everything in sight and sent us over to his house a few days later. Leila, his pretty older sister opened the door. She looked thin and pale that day, her eyes were sunken and swollen. Her eyes lit up when she saw us. She kissed us both on the cheek and gave us a gentle weary smile. She accepted the food and we went home. The family left soon after that; we never got to know the people who moved in afterwards.
Ziva permanently changed after that. Suddenly laughing and crying became obsolete for her. She packed away all her stuffed animals into a garbage bag. All the little faded bunnies, the extensive collection of care bears, as well as the giant fluffy yellow duck ended up in the crawlspace of our basement. I knew what had happened to her- Ziva had become an adult. An array of events had climaxed and her denial of adulthood had disappeared. Perhaps our childhood never really existed.
Years after Ziva had initially stowed her stuffed animals in the basement I, a wayward explorer, stumbled across them one day. The ceiling had begun to sag where she shoved them in the crawlspace and I curiously took them down. I was about thirteen at the time and Ziva was still around, however momentarily.
"What were these doing in the basement?" I asked her innocently, even though I knew exactly why.
"Where else would I put them?" She answered, shoveling a generous slice of my latest pie creation into her mouth. "I had nearly forgotten all about them." She shrugged.
"Ziva, you can't do that! Stuffed animals have souls!" I said sternly.
"Oh please, Tali." She rolled her eyes and rinsed her plate.
"It's true!" I insisted. "They have souls because we give them little bits of our own! You shouldn't forget about parts of your soul! Look at how many are in here!
That's a big part of you missing."
"Whatever, Tali." She slipped into her leather jacket and out the door.
"I'll have to keep these safe for your own good!" I called after her. "Someday you'll want them back!"
I know, it's so metaphorical I can hardly stand it...