With Eyes Like the Moon & the Stars

I ran for dear life down that street, the thundering crack of gunfire following close behind me. There were other people fleeing as well, most of them focused entirely on their own safety, and not at all worried about helping those around them. It was for that reason that no one stopped to help when a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen fell to the ground, blood emerging from a shot wound just beneath her right knee. She screamed in pain, and the people around her only stopped a moment, seemingly relieved they were still uninjured, and ran on. I stopped myself, but when the others left I only stood and watched them, unable to bring myself to do the same. I knelt beside her, examining the wound and quickly determining she would not be walking anytime soon. I searched the area for a more sheltered place, and found one in a narrow alley some ten meters away.

Taking the girl―who was not particularly light, I might mention―in my arms, I struggled down the street and turned down the alley, setting her on the ground again before I began ripping away at the fabric of her shirt; it was cleaner than my own and would serve better as a bandage. She was unconscious by now, having fainted after losing so much blood.

I did not get very far in my bandaging, before the distant gunfire ceased, allowing me to hear more footsteps just down the street. I peered round the corner, a rather stupid idea on my part, for it revealed my location. Fortunately, the two Adran soldiers that were slowly approaching did not notice. I withdrew, backing further into the alley and kneeling beside the girl. There I sat in absolute silence, waiting for the two soldiers to pass us by.

"Leave not a single survivor, Corporal, is that clear?" said what I guessed to be a rather arrogant officer.

"Yes, sir." Replied a much younger voice.

"There's a good lad. Can't be soft hearted around here, boy. No, sir. We must obliterate the whole race, before they do the same to us; sparing not women, children, or elders. They all must be gotten rid of!"

Their words sent chills down my spine. My heart pounded in my chest and to me it was a wonder they couldn't hear it. If I made a single sound, took a single step forward, did anything that might reveal my location, I was as good as dead, and that unfortunate young girl along with me.

The minute that it took them to walk down the street was a thousand years in my frightened mind. But they made it past without seeing or hearing us. That is, until they had very nearly come to the end of the street and rounded a corner, when the girl woke up.

She sat up, gasping for air, and began to ask where she was. She had barely even gotten the first word out before I clasped a hand over her mouth and pressed a finger to my lips. Within moments she had fainted again, and I removed my hand, praying the soldiers hadn't heard us.

They had.

"What was that?" I heard the younger one ask.

"I don't know. It came from down there, in that alley." Replied the officer.

"Who's there?" called the second.

When we didn't respond I could hear him stepping closer. Each footstep was a death sentence. I glanced down the alley way only to find it was dead end. I was trapped, with an armed Adran soldier headed straight for me.

Again centuries passed in mere seconds as I awaited what I thought would most certainly be the end of my young life.

He stepped into the alley, his gun raised, and his eyes immediately fell upon me. He studied me closely, and I in turn did the same. Never before had I seen an Adran close up, and what strange sight he was. He was a handsome young man, dressed in a soldiers uniform, with skin as pale as milk, silver eyes that shone like sunshine on the ocean, and jet black hair plastered to his forehead, as he was sweating in the Lucian heat.

As I looked him over my fear subsided ever so slightly. I don't know what I'd been expecting to see in this person that represented those that I'd been trained my whole life to live in fear of, but whatever it was it wasn't there. Not in this particular Adran anyway. He wasn't the frightening creature I'd been expecting, he was just a young boy, and he seemed just as frightened as I was.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw the pair of us hiding there in the shadows, he slowly lowered his gun.

"Anyone there?" The officer called from down the street.

"Just a cat." The young soldier said, he was now laying down his gun and taking off the pack of equipment he wore on his back.

"A what?" The older man called.

"A cat, sir. A stray cat."

"Ah, a stray cat. Can't be bothered with that. Come on, Corporal. We'd best be on our way."

"Catch up in a moment, sir." The soldier called to his officer, his eyes still focused on me as he unzipped the main pocket of his equipment sack.

As the footsteps of the officer faded away he drew from his backpack a white plastic box. A label on the front read FIRST AID in bold red lettering.

He slowly stepped closer to us, and I, smart enough not to trust him immediately, backed away. He may not have been as terrifying as I'd expected, and he may have let us live when he'd been given orders moments before to leave no survivors, but I was far from ready to trust this man.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I promise." He said softly. He looked at the girl's injured leg and the makeshift bandages I'd begun putting on it, then held out the first aid kit. "I think this may be of more use to you than to me."

However cautiously, I stepped forward and took hold of the kit, and for a brief moment his hand lingered, as we both stared into each other's eyes, thoroughly intrigued by the whole encounter. Eventually I snatched the first aid kit from him and turned away, taking a second to study it. I wondered why he might want to help us. Without even bothering to consult him I came up with an explanation. An explanation biased by the false view of his people that poisoned my mind, fueled by my hatred for those that had killed my family. I tossed the first aid kit to the ground and it landed at his feet.

"We do not want your handouts." I said disgustedly, crossing my arms as I spoke.

He looked from me to the kit that lie upon the filthy ground, the back to me, in utter shock.

"You disgust me." I spat. "You all come here with your weaponry and you kill every person in sight, destroy anything and everything you wish to. And here you are thinking you can clear your conscience by sparing a few pathetic lives and making a half-hearted effort to help us?"

I shook my head in disapproval and turned on my heal, returning to the injured girl without another word spoken.

For a long moment he simply stood there watching us in absolute silence. I did not look up until I heard his footsteps disappear off into the distance, but when I did I discovered something. He'd left the first aid kit behind.

That was the very first time I met Ben Ellis.

****

By the time the girl had finally awoke I had moved us into an empty building that would provide us with much better shelter. I had also bandaged her injury using the linen bandages provided in the first aid kit, Once the young soldier had gone, having made my point, I had accepted that the kit would indeed prove useful, and retrieved it from the ground.

"Where am I?" the girl asked groggily as she awoke. She sat up and looked around the room, and eventually she looked at me.

"You're safe, that's what matters." I said gently. "Do you remember anything?"

A thoughtful look came over her face, then she began to answer. "I was running, with my brother. We were separated and I…" Here she paused and looked at her injured leg, as though she were just remembering it. "I was shot. I fell to the ground. I thought I was going to die!" She was becoming frightened now. She looked up at me again. "And you saved me."

"I did what I could." I said, modestly thinking I didn't deserve very much praise for being the only person with the decency to help her.

"Thank you." She said gratefully.

In response I only nodded, then properly introduced myself. She reached out and shook my hand, giving her own name. "I'm Natasha." She said. "Lovely to meet you Dana. Are you a refugee also?"

"Yes," I answered. And after that we shared with each other our own individual stories, learning we had quite in common. Natasha, I learned, was thirteen and had been traveling across Lucia with her older brother for the past six months. They had lost their family and their home when their town was bombed and were headed toward the refugee camp that was said to be sixty miles west of our current location. I told her my own story, how I too was headed for the refugee camp, after losing my entire family to a bombing one year before, when I was only fifteen years old.

By the time we were finished the two of us felt quite a lot closer, having learned about our shared past. It was growing late then, so after I promised to help her find her brother when she'd had a bit more time to recover from her injury, the two of us slept on the cool ground of that abandoned building.