• Emberlea:

    "Wake up now, love. Hurry, there isn't much time to waste."

    Through the languidness of that moment, I felt the urgence in my mother's voice. She shook me gently, yet desperately until I staggered into an upright position in my mattress, blinking clinging sleep away from my eyes. She then turned to wake Eleora, my younger sister. Edan, my older brother was already cramming our belongings into several grey suitcases with a frustrated yet melancholic expression in his eyes.

    "Hurry, my children," Mama whispered frantically in the midst of gathering our possessions. "Pack your things and we'll take the car to the airport. There's little time for talk now; I'll tell you everything on the way there. For now, we just need to pack."

    Eleora and I obeyed instinctively. We hurried to gather the few clothes that we owned while tucking away the little sentimental things we held dear, like the colourless photographs of our family and friends, our Bibles, our small books. I fastened the little silver necklace with the blue topaz that Andrei had given to me for Christmas last year around my neck, shoving it under my nightdress like an amulet. We then helped Mama with the hasty packing while Edan helped to lift some of our suitcases out of the house and into the boot of the car. I could hear Papa talking pleadingly on the phone in the next room.

    "Why... are we leaving?" Eleora asked in a small voice, more to herself than to me.

    I knew why we were doing this. At four-thirty in the morning.

    Before my siblings and I had gone to bed last night, we heard Papa talking with Mama in serious tones. These days, Papa's employers were not paying him very much for his work, and Papa could not plead with them for a pay rise. To make matters worse, Papa had been borrowing money from his colleagues to support our family for months now, and they had been hunting him down for weeks. Mama was in tears; we could hear her sobbing. Papa had managed to get last-minute tickets for us to fly to Australia by some miracle, for Papa's colleagues were resorting to violence, and Papa wanted us to be safe from them. Mama begged Papa to run away with us, but Papa believes in justice, so he told Mama to bring us to Australia to live with our distant relative; we would be safe there, while he remained here in Romania to sort out his financial problems with his colleagues somehow, and he would come for us soon after.

    We padded barefoot out of the house hastily. Edan was already in the driver's seat, trying to get our car to start. Papa stood silhouetted in our doorway, the dim candlelight from our living room casting shadows on our dirty walls. We didn't need to see his face to know that there were silent tears making their way down his sunken cheeks.

    "Be good, my children," he whispered through tearful breaths as he gave us all a hug. "Listen to your mother, okay? She will take care of you for the time." He then gave Mama a last embrace before they pulled away reluctantly.

    Eleora and I climbed into the backseat of our small car while Mama sat in front and Edan took his place in the driver's seat. The engine started, and we began to move. Moving further and further away from our home, from our father. The street behind us grew longer and longer. We waved back to Papa who still stood alone outside our house until we drove around a corner and saw him no more.

    The suddenness of it was too much for us. We could not even think. Eleora wrapped her skinny brown arms around me, and mine over her. Mama gave Edan directions to the airport, and I could see she was trying to comfort him in some way. Edan just looked...unhappy. We passed trees and dim lampposts, watched the sky grow bluer from the blackness of night, watching the land get brighter. Beneath my nightdress, the blue topaz stayed pressed to my chest like it was a part of me, my comfort for that moment. Eleora was resting her head on my shoulder. After awhile, my eyelids grew heavy; all will to stay awake escaped me and I gave in to sleep's warm embrace.