She was the light in the darkness.
He was the anchor in the storm.
•••
It's spring of 1940 and Europe has been thrown into possibly the worst war the world has ever known. A young French girl named Rayna has enlisted as a combat medic. With the Nazi...
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•••
She ran through the city, listening to the far off sound of gun fire as the shells of the bullets rained past her.
Rayna knew she wouldn't stay hidden forever. She tried to stay invisible, but the news of a female medic moving locations had gotten out. Now she was racing against the clock to get to the sands of Dunkirk.
She clutched her medic bag closer to her side, ducking and forcing herself to hold in a shout of surprise as she ran.
Rayna sprinted past a half demolished brick building, squeezing the image of her small frame behind an unlit lamp post. Rayna squeezed her eyes shut, threatening to let the tears fall.
She clenched her jaw, mentally hitting herself. Rayna sighed up for this war. She was eighteen. She was no longer a child. And she would not let herself weep like one at the sight of gunfire.
"Over here!" Rayna heard a voice yell. Rayna snapped her eyes open and turned her head to see a boy waving her over, also hiding, behind a small brick wall that was getting pelted with bullets.
He waved her over in desperation, ducking every so often as another bullet hit the other side of the wall he had his back pressed against.
Rayna peaked past the side of the light pole. She took in a deep breath before sprinting towards the brick wall and the boy. He reached out for her and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her next to him behind the safety of the wall.
The boy looked at her, took a deep breath, grabbed her hand, and pulled her into a sprint.
Gun fire blazed around them. Meanwhile, Rayna has no idea where she was going as she was being pulled along by a complete stranger.
The boy only let go of her hand to grab onto a fence and climb over, hopping down on the other side. He waited for Rayna, but only for a split second as she was right behind him.
When she landed on her feet next to him, he looked at her with surprise, but quickly wiped it off of his face and grabbed her hand once again.
They ran out from the alley way, immediately getting shot at. Rayna was the first to react, dragging the boy behind a dumpster to guard themselves from the fire.
"I'm British!" The boy yelled, sticking his hand out from behind the dumpster. The gun fire ceased and he revealed his whole body to the blockade of men on the street.
In a moment of calm and silence, the boy looked at Rayna. She stood, panting in both anxiety and tiredness from sprinting for the last two miles.
He beckoned her out from behind her shelter. She was hesitant, but followed him out. They started walking towards the wall of British soldiers, when even more gun fire began from their left side.
They broke into a sprint, only stopping when they came past the barrier created by the British army.
An older man came up to the boy, pushing him and yelling at him so quickly that Rayna couldn't catch it. Her English was fluent, but the accent was sometimes hard for her to catch in rushed conversations.
Rayna and the boy began to walk through the single street occupied by the British and towards the sands of Dunkirk.
This was the first time Rayna felt like she could actually catch her breath.
"Merci," Rayna spoke in French.
"You're French," he spoke in surprise. This only confused Rayna because they were, in fact, in France.
"And you're British," she spoke in English with her thick French accent, as if mocking him for seeming so surprised that she was a French Woman.
"You didn't see my uniform?" The boy asked, half joking.
Rayna looked him up and down, recognizing his blue jumpsuit. "I did not recognize it."
"So that means that when you saw me, you had no idea who I was and yet you followed me?"
"I didn't have much choice, you dragged me," Rayna spoke. "Besides, you look trustworthy."
"Really?" He asked, and eyebrow raised. She simply nodded.
•••
They walked onto the sands of the beach, their eyes being instantly drawn to the lines of men that stood on the beach.
Rayna didn't understand this. "Why are they standing in lines?" She asked. "They are easy targets from the sky."
The pair walked around a large sand hill to find a boy in his hands and knees, looking like he was unburying something. As they approached him, Rayna realized that he wasn't unburying at all. He was doing the exact opposite.
Rayna stared at the bare feet of the corpse, her eyes darting to the unlaced boots on the boy's feet.
Rayna looked at the boy and he stared back, both of them silently acknowledging the fact that he did what he had to do.
