The sun burst through the clouds, like a valiant army rushing into battle, and exploded silently across the horizon, its thick shafts spilling onto the land below and obliterating a hole in the dark, gradient clouds. It was a small town that lay there, a peaceful one, severed from the beating heart of the urban catastrophes and mangled plaster buildings that cut deeply into the beautiful cerulean sky. It squatted between two looming mountains on the land that was a wrinkled blanket with rolling hills stretching for miles across the vast expanse of the rural area. A billowing stream, coming deep from the pure soul of the silent peak, who watched over the people, pooled into a magnificent lake, that stretched wide and deep.
A sentimental boy lived in the congregation of houses that bordered the west side of the lake, about one mile from the town center in which he collected grain, rice, and bread from every day; it was simply part of his routine along with his various other tasks to keep up with including intensive school work and Judo lessons.
The silent boy may have looked small and meek from the outsider's point of view, but appearance can be deceiving, and only a scratch on the surface. Under the thin silk cloth the boy was veiled in, lay a body rippled with muscle able to toss an angry bull. He was passive, although a spark burned continuously in his chest; it was dangerous and unstable. Disturbing it would demolish the boy and his foe. Everybody in the village knew that. So they didn't fuel the flame.


He woke early, and slipped his grimy feet agilely into his leather sandals and began his trek to town from the outskirts in which his own home lie. The boy was fascinated by the architecture of his ancestors; as he continued, layered buildings rose up around him, each uniquely colored, each uniquely built, each unique in its history. His walks here made him very content and he smiled. As the tips of his mouth began to curl upward, the earth beneath him lurched and shook aggressively, and he was thrown to ground. Another child had fallen just a meter from him, and a soldier clothed in a starchy, green uniform approached and thrust his foot into the other's stomach, sending blood spurting out of his gaping mouth. The child was screaming, yelping helplessly like a dog, but no sound came from within the gaping mouth, for the boy's ears were still enveloped in ringing from the thundering noise. Fear was evident in his eyes, it was swimming in the deep of his pupil. The boy wanted to close his eyes as the soldier put his shiny black boot upon the child's head, but he couldn't, he was frozen and the child's eyes stared deeply into him.
Those eyes.
Pleading for something, anything. But there was nothing. The child's skull shattered like a coconut into thick pieces and his brains spilled from the depths.
Explosions rocketed through the sky, their orange fumes barrelling rapidly upwards, and the boy picked his heavy heap of a body off the ground and began to limp away. His right leg had been twisted in a crude fashion and he could see the shimmering bone emerging from his knee cap. The pain was excruciating, but he had to continue, or he too, would be executed.
A woman stopped him. “Have you seen my son, oh God, have you seen my son?” she asked frantically. Tears flowed down her cheeks. He looked her in the eyes, in the same as the boys, and he put his hand on her shoulder and wept too. In front of him an ancient wood house, decorated with beautiful pigmentation splintered before him, and once more, he plummeted to the ground.
As he struggled to rise from the rubble, he saw the heartless men crawling like ants across his village. They were stabbing a young one with a bayonet and scattering citizens with gunfire. The woman with whom he had been speaking had her legs blown off, and all that remained were fleshy stubs. A soldier identical to the one he had seen before raised a rifle at him, wrapped his finger around the trigger, and prepared to pull it. The flame. The flame had become a fire, pulsing through the veins of the boy. The sparks shot uncontrollably within him and he reached with his dirt crusted hand and twisted the soldier's ankle throwing him off balance. He then grabbed the gun and fired at the man. When he opened his eyes he was met with a terrible sight. He had shot the soldier in the forehead and thick maroon blood spewed from the hole that the bullet had created.
But he too had been shot; he had felt the bullets tear through his flesh and penetrate his stomach. Everything was blurred, blended together. Images were distorted, sounds were only but an echo. All went black.
When the boy awoke, he was on a rotten wood platform, twisted by time into hard knots. Before him were rows of somber faces veiled in the thick, damp fog. He felt a scratchy object wrapped tightly around his neck, but he couldn't decipher exactly what it was, for his head was still cloudy. A loud jeer brought him back to attention.
It was a rope tied around his neck. The fire could not burn through the glaze that enveloped his eyes. The boy looked upon his persecutors. As he shut his eyes and felt a jolt sweep him off his feet, he shut the window to his soul. And the flame died.