It was a long walk back to the District where we lived, the far and distant echos of gunshots ringing in my ears as the war waged on far away from the safety of the city. The war was inescapable it seemed, as persistent as a single fly feasting on the carraiges of bodies that came back from the front lines, the dead and deceased of both sides. It was a far off war though, a war caused by other men for a thousand different reasons that left others dead. A war that I had no plan in fighting, in being involved in; I had always been able to get out of things, and a war was no different.
These thoughts haunted me as I walked back alone, the same path that Kyle had walked perhaps an hour before, but looking like it had been deserted for years. Not many people went down to the Merchant Disrict recently, stockpiling food and ammo had become the main priorities of late, and although no one was starving they were still edgy and trigger happy. It was not much longer when I reached the shop owned by my family, the faded decal on the window reading 'Seth & Son', the name that my step-father had painted on the day we took the shop. A memory from a simpler time hit me then, a much younger me, perhaps five years ago, standing and watching a healthier Seth, my step-father since before I can remember, carefully tracing the letters in from a stencil and then grabbing a thick black paint and filling in the letters. The joy in my eyes as he filled in the final words, gave me a place in a family I had always felt disconnected from, even at such a young at, the way he protected me and watched me as his own son, showing all his care in a simple word on a dirty shop window. I reached up to wipe the dust off the lettering, breaking the trance that the memory had locked me in for only a moment, and walked into the dimly lit shop. The rest of my family was already gathered around the fire, warming up before dinner, Seth, my mother Becca, and my sister Lily. My mother looked up and smiled as I walked in, the light reflecting off the gold on my army uniform catching her once perfect smile. We had been rich once before, when I was born, with deep roots in the city. My mother had been beautiful, though I thought she still was, yet it was a very long time ago, before I could even form and keep memories.
