Kindness In An Upside-down World

• Ivy Rapley, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2022

It was the 10/3/22 it had been two weeks since Russia had declared war and four weeks since dad had joined the army. There had been lots of shouting the night dad said he wanted to join, then there was silence. I knew dad had won. Three days later dad left, and we haven’t heard from him since.

Mum, two-month-old Sasha, our precious dog Ani, and I have been hiding from bombs in the apartment basement since the start of the war. At the start there were six families hiding with us but half of them have fled. That night after Mum had put Sasha to sleep, she handed me a piece of paper. It was a letter from the army. I did not sleep well that night, cuddled next to Ani. I could not bear the thought that I would never see dads loving eyes or hear his gentle voice. It saddened me that Sasha would never remember his own dad. With all of these thoughts I cried. Ani licked my face.

The next morning the bombs fell like rain again but closer. Too close. They shook the room like huge earthquakes. We had to run. Soon they would be bombing our street, even our apartment. I shook the thought away. Mum was shouting at me she said, ‘We need to run now!’ She was right. Mum was slow she had hip problems, but she was trying her hardest to escape harm. I looked back, but at that moment our apartment exploded. I bit my lip and kept running. At that moment I realised Ani was still in there. She would either be stuck in the basement without any food or crushed by rubble. I think mum realised too because she was crying. Once we were out of town mum said we would catch a train into Belarus.

To get to the train station we had to walk around the outskirts of our town and then into the center. Mum got tired quickly, so I carried Sasha. The train station was packed with people that were fleeing. All the noise made Sasha cry. We had to wait hours to get to the ticket man. He said all the tickets for Belarus had sold out but there were still tickets for Poland. We took them, deciding it was safer than waiting. Two hours later the train arrived, it was already packed with terrified passengers. The train ride was monotonous. I slept most of the way, only waking up a few times to see the lovely countryside. We arrived in Poland to find prams lined up on platforms. We had lost everything our house, dad and Ani. Yet through this horrible experience we had gained one thing. A pram. These prams were just a simple act of kindness in an upside-down world but somehow, they made an enormous difference.