CHAPTER 4

"The soldiers had breached our street. Let's get out of here quickly! Celeste, come on." The man dressed in a ripped, thin undershirt entered a small girl's house in a hurry. He forthwith grabbed the child and linked her waist above his shoulders. She gawked upon him and her mother beside him curiously.

His voice was as shaky as Celeste's body, his forehead sweaty just as her palms are, and the beat of his feet running fast towards the outside rhymes with the beat of her heart. There are too many questions rummaging in her mind when her mother started to prowl relentlessly on the edges of our home.

Her face was difficult to understand and Celeste failed to recognize her will. They strode forwards and closed the door of the cabin. "Where are we faring, Mama? What soldiers are uncle talking about?" Celeste's minuscule voice questioned as she watched her mother insert a key into her pocket.

None of them responded and endeavored to wander along the avenue. Everything seemed slow and vague. As Celeste silently observes the situation, she witnesses the dilapidated houses and disturbances in the air. Her senses do not lie. The ravenous cries, deafening screams, burning structures, and bodies impaled with wood are not mere fantasies. It must be a monster or a demon who could do such a horrendous thing.

"Dead, dead, dead..." Celeste whispered. She attests to the horrors of the conflict and its grave impingement on people. Burning and dying. Body skins peeling and coiling in a black thin-like crepe, with their voices screaming persistently. "Mama, are we going to be like that too?"

"Celeste?" Her mother called as though she did not hear what she said. "D-don't worry, we'll be fine."

She beamed at her and caressed her face. They raced up to the rocky steps until they met a tall old house. The door swung open with a creaking noise and the three of them abruptly walked over the threshold. As Celeste's mother closed the door behind them, a lamp cast a blinking light toward them.

The eerie outlines of the house were engraved in Celeste's eyes as her uncle spoke. "I saw three more running away but they were caught and killed. This place should last for a while."

"There's another war going on," Celeste whispered again, but it was louder than before.

"I'm so sorry, darling." Her mother cried. "You have to experience horrible things like this..."

After a while, they hearken the heavy rain. Celeste doesn't know if her mother is crying and if she should tell her not to worry when she feels empty and frustratingly desolate. Even though they are inside, it feels as though the rain started to mercilessly hit her body against the thunder rumbling tremendously. Her question beforehand on what my mother was doing when she seemed to be searching for something was revealed when she seized a key the moment we reached a room.

"Agua! It's us! Your wife and daughter are here with me!" Her uncle shouted as he continued to knock on the door.

Alarmed, they decided to break down the door. At the exact moment, the door was slammed shut towards the ground, Celeste's mother clasped her mouth tightly and fell to her knees.

"It-it can't be…" he whispered.

"A-Agua!" Celeste's mother shouted and tried to approach whatever was inside

"It must be a trap! Don't go in!"

"B-but my husband!" it wailed and dropped to its knees again.

"A-Agua," Celeste muttered, mind still not functioning very well. "Th-that's my father's name."

Constructing her hunches from her mother's reaction, Celeste knew what could have happened. Celeste lost the little focus she had left and tears brimmed over her face. She attempted to rise but her mother pulled her away.

"Don't Celeste! Do not look...plea-please I'm begging you."

The swirling sensation in Celeste's stomach couldn't be expressed by mere words. As her chest tightens, she can't choose what emotion should rule over.

Ever since her existence, war is the only thing she witnessed, why is my mother still ignorant about her seeing these things?

The room before her was in ruins, woods struggling to keep on their respective places, blood splattered across the messy devastation. After Celeste watched it, she made sure her tears were hers and stroked them.

Then it struck her. It wasn't because she couldn't feel anything, it wasn't because she felt isolated, and it wasn't because she felt weary of losing her father and everything.

Celeste was enduring it frantically, tolerating the pain desperately and withstanding the war patiently that her body can't sustain it anymore that she found herself howling in my mother's arms in a second.

A war has emerged again and her father is probably dead. This is too much, too much for a little one. Too much to bury in her heart and memory.

Celeste saw her mother's golden eye, oh how sad and destructive it was. Then all of a sudden, the surroundings gradually turned black. Celeste once again opened her eyes.

"Oh, was it a dream?" she asked herself. Her environment is different now. A soft white mattress. Light coming from the window. Fresh grass from the garden of Elicia Homes.

It was the Celeste of the past. Celeste's arm tightened to embrace herself. The outburst of their screams, the dread in their eyes, the quavering of people's lips, and the fear so powerful she shudders at the thought. It must be the old memories of the body she currently resides in now. After all, those do not belong to her.