Along the River of Redemption

"I'm sorry, Klementinka." Mirko sobbed.

"No." Klementinka said. He didn't seem to have the energy to say anything else. The two boys had been walking for days, trying to get back home. But it was all in vain. Their town was gone forever. So many lives were lost because of Mirko's inaction. Why hadn't he stayed by the river? What happened that day?

"The river overflowed. There wasn't anything I could do." Mirko continued sobbing. "What was I supposed to do?"

Klementinka didn't answer this time either. He just kept walking through the woods, staring at his feet as if they held the answers to life's greatest questions. As if looking at them hard enough would make him forget all the horrors he had seen in their town, back where the people of his village lived and died and loved each other.

Mirko followed behind him, sobbing and crying, shaking his head in disbelief. They walked on and on, until they reached a hill that overlooked the remains of their town. Everything was burned and blackened, houses reduced to cinders and piles of ash. On one side of the hill stood a church, unharmed except for some minor smoke damage around its roof edges and windowsills, while everything around it had been reduced to rubble. On the other side lay an empty field, its grasses withered and dead.

Mirko wanted to cry out when he saw what remained of their village, but no sound escaped from his lips. Instead he just stared wide eyed at the ruined land that used to be home to him and his family and friends and neighbors. A cold feeling crept up his spine as he realized that he had brought this upon himself. He remembered how excited he had been when Klementinka told him about the flood earlier that day, how excited he had been when Klementinka showed him all of his treasures from their trip down the river a few weeks ago, how excited he had been when Klementinka told him about how brave their parents were for creating new homes for everyone on top of that hill above them during construction season last year...

"I'm so sorry." Mirko said again, tears streaming down his face as he choked on sobs that refused to leave his chest.

"It's not your fault," Klementinka replied softly as he looked over at Mirko's tear-stained face with gentle eyes filled with wisdom far beyond his years, "We both knew there was a good chance something like this could happen."

"Why did you go alone then?" Mirko asked bitterly as he turned away from their ruined town to look up into Klementinka's comforting face once again. "You could have warned me!" He cried out in agony as hot tears rolled down his pale cheeks and dripped off of pointy chin onto his dirty brown shirt collar below it before falling onto the dry forest floor below him in splashes of salt water surrounded by wilted late summer ferns and red-orange maple leaves covered in black smog from the fire that destroyed everything they ever knew together without either one of them being able to do a damn thing about it except grieve for what they had lost until it became too much for either one of them to handle anymore...