SHELTER

     I feel funny not writing anything. Giving you day-to-day news from my place is fine, but I love the feeling of my imagination taking control of my fingers and a tickle of the thrill when I create a story.

SHELTER

     We lived here for ages. The wars in Europe spilled into the rest of the world and raged for years leaving billions dead and the planet devastated. My great-grandparents escaped to this obscure place in Siberia from their own home in the United States. When North America and Japan were obliterated by a nuclear blast, they were already safely ensconced in a small house among the snows and ancient trees of taiga, a primeval forest in the Far East of Russia. 

     Life hasn't been easy here. They had to survive in a merciless environment, relying only on their own resources. Fortunately, they found friends and support in the Evenks, the indigenous people of this land. 
     That was almost seventy years ago. My great-grandparents had two children, two boys, who married Evenk women. We came from a Japanese-European background, and the Asian genes became even more pronounced in the following generations. The families multiplied, and now there is a small village here that lives it's simple, busy everyday life.
     I often asked myself a question: who was that couple that made a heart-wrenching decision to move to this, seemingly, God forsaken part of the world? It couldn't be easy, and they must've made an educated guess, where the war and it's consequences won't reach them. I rummage in the things that are left from them: a lot of papers and science manuals, photographs and knick-knacks from their age and culture, but my efforts to decipher their identities and reasons for coming here were fruitless. That is until a week ago.
     Amur and Dular, my two sons, felt restless and hot, with nothing to do before school would start again in a few weeks. An old underground shelter, not used or visited by anyone since their grandparents' time, was the one place forbidden for them to explore, and they zeroed in on it, like a tiger zeroes in on a grazing deer. 
      I heard Dular's cries, as he ran to the main house. Fortunately for his brother, it was a lunch hour, and many men were at their homes, so it was easy to dig him out of a collapsed hole. Covered with dirt and slobber, my boys didn't remember about their find at first: a metal trunk, hidden for many years in the shelter.

To Be Continued...

Copyright protected.