Chapter Two: Beneath the Ashes
850 Words
The first week at the shelter passed like a blur—numb, gray, and heavy. Days bled into nights with little distinction. Morning routines were strict: up by six, bathe quickly, line up for a breakfast that tasted more like obligation than nourishment. The bread was dry. The tea was weak. But Kola ate in silence, staring at the chipped table, surrounded by boys with hollow eyes who had also lost something—or everything.
He hadn’t spoken much. Not because he didn’t want to, but because words felt useless now. What could he say that would make the emptiness any smaller? What explanation could he offer for his vanished parents when even the authorities had none?
The shelter matron, Miss Tayo, tried to reach him. She was kind in a tired sort of way, with lines on her face that told of years spent patching broken children back together. She would kneel beside him during mealtimes and ask how he was feeling, what he needed, if he wanted to talk.
Kola always gave the same response: a quiet shake of the head.
Because beneath his silence was something else—shame. Deep, gnawing shame. He felt like an abandoned object. Unwanted. Forgotten. A mistake someone had decided not to claim.
The other boys noticed too. They weren’t cruel, but they kept their distance. In their world, trust was currency—and Kola was still bankrupt. He didn’t know the codes, the alliances, the games they played to make life bearable. He just watched. And endured.
At night, long after the lights were turned off, Kola would lie on his back and stare at the ceiling, trying to listen for anything familiar. The tick of his father’s watch. The hum of the fridge. The sound of his mother praying in whispers she thought he couldn’t hear.
But there was nothing.
Only snores, shifting bodies, and the occasional groan from a boy caught in a dream he couldn’t outrun.
On the eighth night, he had a nightmare.
He was back in the apartment, sitting at the kitchen table. Everything was exactly how it used to be—the sunlight, the sounds, the smells. His mother was at the stove. His father reading the paper. He smiled.
Then the front door burst open, and smoke poured in.
Flames licked the curtains. His parents screamed. Kola tried to run to them, but the floor turned to ash beneath his feet. He fell into darkness, and just before he hit the ground, he woke up—sweat-drenched and shaking.
He didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
That morning, something shifted. He didn’t want breakfast. He didn’t want to sit in the activity room. He didn’t even want to go to the makeshift school in the back compound. He slipped away when no one was watching, ducking behind the laundry shed and squeezing through the rusted fence at the edge of the shelter.
The city was loud and unforgiving. Cars honked without mercy. Pedestrians brushed past him like wind. Vendors shouted in three different languages. The sun was high and hot, pressing against his skin like punishment.
He wandered without direction, feet blistering in worn-out sandals, stomach growling with need. But still, he walked. Past shops, past markets, past men in fine suits who never looked his way. Past beggars whose outstretched hands mirrored what he felt inside.
By afternoon, he found himself near the ruins of an old building—burnt down years ago in a fire no one had bothered to clean up. Charred beams poked from the ground like broken ribs. Ash and dust still lingered in the air.
Kola stepped through the debris, ignoring the soot that clung to his fingers, the black that stained his soles. He found a spot near the collapsed wall and sat down, letting the silence fill him. This place, he thought, looked exactly like he felt—destroyed, forgotten, empty.
Beneath the ashes, he began to weep. Not softly this time. Not quietly. His shoulders shook. His breath came in hiccups. He screamed once, just once, into the dust.
And when he was done, something strange happened.
He felt lighter.
Not better. Not fixed. But... lighter.
Like the weight he’d carried since the day his world shattered had loosened just enough to let him breathe.
He stayed there until the sun dipped low behind the buildings. Until the sky turned the color of bruises and the shadows lengthened. Then, and only then, did he stand up.
He looked at his hands—covered in black ash. His face, too, was surely streaked with it. But he didn’t wipe it off. Not yet. It felt honest.
Kola didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. He didn’t know how long he’d last at the shelter, or what he’d do if they kicked him out for running off. But as he retraced his steps, heading slowly back into the city’s chaos, he carried something he didn’t have that morning.
A seed.
Small. Fragile.
But real.
Because sometimes, what remains beneath the ashes… is the beginning of something new.
- Writer
