Warre
Establishing Nation
- Joined
- May 13, 2010
- Messages
- 1,384
- Nick
- Warr
The sun was rising in the sky, up and down the glenns. The sudden burst of light made his pupils dilate slightly as Donald felt those beams of light and heat invade his small, crowded, bedroom as he crouched over his desk. His pale eyes flickered across the pages, which like everything else in the world– despite being in full color for everyone else, were black, white, and shades of grey to him.
He remembered the colors, though, the boy remembered the vivid blues, oranges, greens, reds- in this, his favorite comic book. He had been five years old when the war finally reached his family's door step- and when a stray artillery strike knocked a roof down onto him and while he lived through it... he never saw colors again.
Perhaps that was part of the reason Donald was so obsessive about reading this old, wrinkled comic. A Havok! Comic which some people might not even believe existed, from before Bantyr had become an impossibly divided nation which didn't even have control of its full territory. Before its old government had made a fool of itself, before all of that.
The hero of the comic gave Donald courage to go out and face the day, to imagine he was The Bantyric Bear himself, fighting evil and protecting the little guys (like him) from bullies and attackers. The comic was almost as old as he was, but the series was long out of print, and when you had to have the whole family working just to eat anything but potatoes and gruel, it wasn't exactly possible to try to buy a foreign comic book.
So he read over it again and again, before taking one of his school pencils and a piece of paper which almost every area had already been filled with something, and began to sketch, to draw. His own attempt at the Bantyric Bear.
A good hour passed before his mother called down from their home's tiny kitchen, and the thirteen year old began his meandering the staircase with the same careful precision that all their family had going down it, and soon he had walked down the three and a half-stories to their home's bottom floor, which was dominated almost entirely by a front room, the dining room, and the kitchen and the central fireplace which climbed all the way to the top of the home and was the center of it all. With a smile brighter than the sunshine which had invaded his room, young Donald walked over to his mother, giving her a good morning hug and kiss.
At the end of the same motion, she had him sitting at the hard-spun table which Donald's father had made from scrap-wood after the war. As soon as he was sitting, he was greeted with a bowl of warm water, oats, and malt, a dish which they tried to not even give a name -despite the fact it was a daily occurrence-. Water helped stretch food supplies, and even this much after the war they were sparse; seemed like they always would be.
So he began with his bowl of gruel like substance, eating it without true excitement or enthusiasm, but with the same practice of a boy who knew he had to eat it or suffer from the pangs of hunger until it was time for lunch at school. Soon, all too soon, his father came to the table, and with far more speed finished his own bowl, gave Donald's mother a kiss, and departed in silence to the long hours of work which he had to endure- and so many others in The Republic of Bantyr still endured.
As soon as Donald's father was gone though, his mother looked about to see if he was truly gone, then appeared with a fried egg for the boy, who had just finished his bowl. “Eat it, Donald. Eat it for momma and grow up to be a strong, brave man like your Bearman.” she remarked, having known her son's love for the comics all too well.
After he ate, and she ate- and his brothers and sister ate, they all left the house to go work in the garden before school started at noon. It was true that in Bantyr of the current day, everyone had to pitch in in a family, if they wanted to eat.
He remembered the colors, though, the boy remembered the vivid blues, oranges, greens, reds- in this, his favorite comic book. He had been five years old when the war finally reached his family's door step- and when a stray artillery strike knocked a roof down onto him and while he lived through it... he never saw colors again.
Perhaps that was part of the reason Donald was so obsessive about reading this old, wrinkled comic. A Havok! Comic which some people might not even believe existed, from before Bantyr had become an impossibly divided nation which didn't even have control of its full territory. Before its old government had made a fool of itself, before all of that.
The hero of the comic gave Donald courage to go out and face the day, to imagine he was The Bantyric Bear himself, fighting evil and protecting the little guys (like him) from bullies and attackers. The comic was almost as old as he was, but the series was long out of print, and when you had to have the whole family working just to eat anything but potatoes and gruel, it wasn't exactly possible to try to buy a foreign comic book.
So he read over it again and again, before taking one of his school pencils and a piece of paper which almost every area had already been filled with something, and began to sketch, to draw. His own attempt at the Bantyric Bear.
***
A good hour passed before his mother called down from their home's tiny kitchen, and the thirteen year old began his meandering the staircase with the same careful precision that all their family had going down it, and soon he had walked down the three and a half-stories to their home's bottom floor, which was dominated almost entirely by a front room, the dining room, and the kitchen and the central fireplace which climbed all the way to the top of the home and was the center of it all. With a smile brighter than the sunshine which had invaded his room, young Donald walked over to his mother, giving her a good morning hug and kiss.
At the end of the same motion, she had him sitting at the hard-spun table which Donald's father had made from scrap-wood after the war. As soon as he was sitting, he was greeted with a bowl of warm water, oats, and malt, a dish which they tried to not even give a name -despite the fact it was a daily occurrence-. Water helped stretch food supplies, and even this much after the war they were sparse; seemed like they always would be.
So he began with his bowl of gruel like substance, eating it without true excitement or enthusiasm, but with the same practice of a boy who knew he had to eat it or suffer from the pangs of hunger until it was time for lunch at school. Soon, all too soon, his father came to the table, and with far more speed finished his own bowl, gave Donald's mother a kiss, and departed in silence to the long hours of work which he had to endure- and so many others in The Republic of Bantyr still endured.
As soon as Donald's father was gone though, his mother looked about to see if he was truly gone, then appeared with a fried egg for the boy, who had just finished his bowl. “Eat it, Donald. Eat it for momma and grow up to be a strong, brave man like your Bearman.” she remarked, having known her son's love for the comics all too well.
After he ate, and she ate- and his brothers and sister ate, they all left the house to go work in the garden before school started at noon. It was true that in Bantyr of the current day, everyone had to pitch in in a family, if they wanted to eat.