"fuck I forget!"

Turning to her with a light-hearted smile he knelt before her and gave her a slight kiss on the cheek. She was still visibly unhappy, it didn't worry him she never was really in a good mood. He loved her though, he'd travel around with her through thick and thine. They had already seen the world together, he had been lucky enough to be stationed in several exotic continents. She loved the tropics and the desert, the people of the orient too. The world excited her, but nothing in her marvelous existence truly fulfilled her heart. "There is just more to it!" she used to say, arms crossed with a big puffy lip squeezing out from under her nose. She was right and he knew it. "There is more to it baby, I agree." He used to stop and tell her to try to appease herself. Nothing worked she needed to understand the final piece of the puzzle, death. She was sixteen by this time. A women in most regards, out there in the middle east, well not to him, but in her eyes she was ready to be given some independence. Over their years of travel many things had happened, he was in the Melita sometimes, he needed to make ends meet. He always wanted to offer her the best, unfortunately sometimes the best meant she had to get up and move with him, sometimes across the world, sometimes across the street. Life was up and down for the two of them and it made her developing heart miserable. They both accepted it, there was really nowhere else for her to go. She needed him and he needed her. Life was hard outside of the boundaries of their home, whatever the two of them had at the time was sanctuary just as long as they were together.
One night she was awakened with a sudden jolt and then shock. "Come sweetie quickly, we have to go, they're here for you, we have to go." He was always so calm in those situations, under the highest caliber of stress he seemed to remain level headed, always. She remembered the smell of smoke that night, it was then, the night after he had brought her out of the compound, he had allowed her to drive the truck. Now the two of them were ridding off into the desert, alone. It was cool out there, but she was used to it. Sitting in the armored vehicle she remembered the first time they set off into the night.

"Sidney would you hurry up?" she remembered his voice, it was horse and tiered, the two of them hadn't been sleeping when he heard the insurgents. They were there for the three of them. He was a rebel, an escaped convict, Sidney was his accomplice. The two would have been invincible if it wasn't for her, just a refugee, a twerp, her child. She remembered what it was like the three of them in the truck, listening to the radio, listening, finding out clues on what to do next, where to go. The last time the three of them were together she remembered the smell of the burning flesh.

'Hey Billy?" she asked him, shaking her head trying to block the memory of her scorched mother from coming to mind. It wasn't his fault, but every time she looked into his eyes she saw the burden he carried. "Yeah?" he asked back. It was early morning now, and the sun was making head way up, filling the horizon with fragments of sugar coated, colorful, vibrant light. The colors reminded her of life. Smiling she asked "What was the name of that song?" "Which one"he asked, straight faced, happy to be out of the way of danger. "That song mom used to sing to me before we started running,"