Love Between Vengeance

They say life is a balance of failures and success, but does everyone get to have those balances when their life is inclined with past traumas and hatred within their hearts, unable to forgive—unable to love?

If life is fair, why are there so many people struggling with poverty while others are living on a pool of money?

If life is not bigoted, why are there people out there trying everything and risking uncertainties but ending up failing while others don't need to exhaust themselves but can get in the way they wanted? And why are there hardworking people who just want peace but end up in the palms of rich and cruel people brutally killing them like their lives are inconsequential to those people like them and see them as a threat to corporate something or a hindrance to achieving the desires they might have lost when they're there?

This is the realization of Sienna at the early age of eleven after being the only survivor of her family after the tremendous fire that happened two years ago that devoured the whole village and left nothing but ashes and ruins, losing the lives of innocent people. This happened under the manipulation of the beast, and for her, no forgiveness shall be given to them even if they die.

“Hey, you! " A fat young boy at her age called and stood right in front of her like some kind of a boss. Although she was completely perplexed about his sudden appearance, she can't help but to notice his fitted yellow shirt that is so small for his body configuration and short to cover his dirty navel. There were crumbs left on his neck and the visible dry pattern of cold on his cheeks all the way to his ears. Her eyes rode on the unlikeable gap of his dirty blue pants that have been worn for three days which she might have thought so disarray because as yellow as the sun shines against the dark blue ocean floor color of his pants, blue and yellow was breaking the measurements of her color perception and she found it killing her sight into myopia if she keeps seeing it.

The boy frowned at how Sienna looked at him from head to toe, as if she were talking to him unmannerly with words he's not able to hear or comprehend. Soon, the boy lost his temper and asked, “What are you looking at? "

Without any intention of giving back the boy's discourteousness, she answered, "But you're standing in front of me, so what am I supposed to see?” not trying to give a way for sarcasm or sounded insulting, but the boy already got a bad comprehension and became furious.

“Give me that teddy bear! That is mine!"He shouted and tried to grab the stuffed toy in her hands, but she clasped it tightly before him. “Let it go."

“Are you talking about the song sung by Demi Lovato or the Disney movie we watched last week, or are you saying to let go of this stuffed toy initially given to me? ”Sienna replied, and the boy easily got confused, figuring out what she's trying to say, but none of the answers came his way, and he even thought Sienna was provoking her level of intelligence.

"Shut up! Let go!” He insisted on giving more of his strength to pull the teddy bear, but Sienna was so determined not to let it go. "In a count of three, if you won't get off your hands to this toy, I will kick till you cough blood.” He threatened, but no matter how scary he looked, Sienna remained as she was and didn't budge or flinch, which made the boy feel provoked and pissed at his composition.

" One…"

"Two…” His enormous leg stretched back, preparing a hard kick to her face. Sienna wasn't so stupid to identify that he was going to kick her. She knew she had to do something, and an idea popped into her mind.

“Three…,” before he could manage to lift his leg and kick her face, she grabbed the cutter and sliced the toy on its neck. Pulling by the gravity of his own strength, Alex rolled over the ground like a ball.

“If I can't have it, you can't have it either.” Sienna speaks to her mind, nailing her glares to Alex, before turning her back and leaving the bully behind. Alex was fuming like a dragon, blowing up his nose with smoke and fire ejecting out of his mouth. Seeing how pissed off he is is making Sienna's inner fervor laugh, but her blank mien is mocking him.

Actually, she doesn't really have a complete preference for toys, and she doesn't mind cutting and throwing half of the body at him. It can be sew, but knowing Alex, he wouldn't want to have an impoverished toy, and if the head knows he bullied her again, he will be punished to clean the toilet for one week, perhaps for a fortnight.

Alex has been bullying anyone from the orphanage, but Sienna was the apple before the target board, and after the pointed arrow he aimed to shoot, but he kept missing the target point. So now, almost every day, he tried to piss Sienna, but none of his counterstrategies would work, and neither his angry face could make her flinch.

Her feet work away from where she's been, but from where she could also feel the great sense of an angry, defeated opponent, not quite distantly predicted inaccurately but surely by her instincts, who only never lies at her. She writhed and saw Alex running towards her like a lion, ready to jump off and attack his prey.

Her expeditious sagacity brought her foot into blistering steps up to the branches of the tree until she reached the top and could almost see the wholeness of the orphanage location, and everyone below was like a tiny colony of ants. Her eyes roamed around, and she couldn't help but be amazed at how everything looked so magnificent from above’s perspective. She had almost emanated Alex at the back of her mind until she felt a small object hitting her, but not too serious to take the painless pain the stone had given her.

“You evil little girl! Are you afraid? Get down and face me! "Alex shouted, trying to get hold of Sienna by shaking the branches, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough to shake the whole tree down unless a giant would emerge to help his butt out.

“Bears can't climb trees, so why are you wasting your energy chasing me? ”Sienna shouted, but she knows Alex could barely hear anything from the gap between her and him from up there, making her voice less pellucid to tell what she's saying. Alex keeps insisting on catching Sienna down, although he knows his strength is incapable of doing so.

" Alex!” A familiar terrific voice came out from the enormous oak entrance of the orphanage, wearing a white dress that almost touched the ground, her thick tattooed eyebrows was meeting at the mid-point of her discouragement, and her thick red lips was budging along the way as she gargle words Sienna couldn't hear from the tree above so she had to slid a bit until Ms. Anna's voice is clearly sermoning Alex.

“What are you doing there? Are you bullying Sienna again? I have already warned you about the consequences of bullying, Alex, but you're not listening to me like you're supposed to do!”Alex just downcast, eyes fixed on the ground while his fingers are secretly tottering through behind his back.

Sienna felt something was urging her to save Alex's butt just this time, but she herself kept insisting on shutting down the voice that was trying to make her do stupid things instead. Alex was quiet. His words were blunt, and his voice cracks into fragments when he's trying to speak. Her tongue can no longer be twisted and has remained stagnant.

Sienna slid down through branches and branches, avoiding the fragile part of the tree, as she let the intrusive voice win over her obstinacy of helping Alex. She jumped off and landed behind Alex like a pro, brushing off the grass and soil particles from her hands.

“No, Ms., we’re just playing hide-and-seek. He saw me, but I was the one who didn't want to get down." Sienna lied, and Alex couldn't certainly almost believe how she put the blame on herself.

“Are you sure? '' Ms. Anna asked, confirming before looking at Alex and the worn out, beheaded teddy bear laying in grass behind us. Sienna tightly closed her eyes hoping Ms. Anna wouldn't ask about it but what she's hoping for was swept away when Ms. Ann did ask them about it. Sienna doesn't know what lie she could catapult to Ms. Anna again hit her credence and let them move on for some part. But, just like an alliance became each other's opponent in the war, budging each other's trust as one betrays, Alex did the same. He pointed Sienna as a greedy, selfish, and prideful brat who doesn't want to share her toys and rather cut it than anyone having to touch it. He told Ms. Anna, who was looking at Sienna with a disapproving look, how she refused to play with him leaving her misjudged and punished. Alex even cried to accompany his unethical lies with presumption making Ms. Anna dive into having to believe his fabricated statement.

After that, Ms. Anna punished Sienna for being greedy and selfish, which she didn't really deserve, but because of Alex, she was punished instead of him.

“I am sorry, Alex. I promise to share my toys with you." The punishment of writing an apology letter, which should be written on a whole sheet of paper, back to back, made her hands feel numb, and thinking it was another way of apologizing to Alex made her sick and want to vomit.

Out of nowhere, Alex came to her, and by the look of his face, he doesn't seem happy. Sienna was bewildered by how Alex looked at her when he should be laughing his ass off and teasing her for having been punished. She just continued writing without acknowledging his presence. She was still mad at how badly he turned things out after saving him.

After the punishment, Sienna finally got the chance to sneak and get rid of Alex. She discovered an abandoned way at the back of the orphanage that leads through a beautiful river and the peaceful music of the water streaming towards the south, consoling everything that pisses her off. Her eyes feast upon seeing the other world behind the orphanage, and it forgot everything that vexed or distressed her.

Under the tree, inside the shade, it brought her to stay and lay, avoiding the burning heat of the sun as she laid her back. She took out the locket she's been keeping and securing, and inside were the beautiful smiles of her family—her mother, father, sister, and herself. Sienna painted a quick bitter smile on her face as something was stabbing her chest again upon thinking that they would never return and would always be inside the memory of her locket.

“I miss you all so much." Her eyes began to warm up as tears ran down on her cheeks like indeed a river streaming down the south. The pain of losing the people she loved was still there in her heart, and the amount of heaviness that weights her heart will never be diminished by time, and no cure can heal her wounded heart.

It has been two years, and everything feels like yesterday. The memories—she had them all, and the trauma was still there. It has been two years, and the pain she felt will never be consolidated with free food, a home, toys, or even a family that will bring her home from the orphanage.

That devastating night reminisced on her mind again.

The fire was booming, and everything that it passed through was burned and melted, including their house and the lives of people who stuck inside, unable to make it up to the outside. Her father quickly threw Sienna out of the three-meter distance of the window from the ground and told her to run as fast as she could, along with the residents. She paused and looked back to see that their house had almost been eaten by the fire. How fast does fire eat everything in a few seconds? She wanted to go back and save her family, but someone carried her away from the danger zone. The fire was getting bigger and bigger, and the thick, black smoke covered the entire village. She lost sight of her house and her family.

Not long enough, the fireman came to rescue, but it was too late. The whole village has burned into ashes, and no one trapped inside has survived, not even her family. That time, fear crept into her mind, and the thought of being alone terrified her so much. She wept and howled for her loss. Her tears were like rain, and her heart has been burdened by the weight it gives her when she knows her family has not survived and has died. Her wounds and the physical agony she felt will no longer match the pain she felt from loss.

The day before the incident happened, Sienna heard how her father argued with the mayor about buying the village. She could hear how her father fought for their rights, and the mayor's words left her astounded. He threatened her father and slapped him hard. Upon seeing how the mayor laid his hands on her father, Sienna's anger rose.

His father is a good and respected president of their village, and seeing how horrible that person was to him made her enraged, but she was taught not to dip into adult conversation, so she had nothing to do about the matter, even if she wanted to. Her father held several meetings about this serious matter, and all the members disagreed with selling the village.

Sienna's father and all of the village officials protested about it, and as expected, the mayor didn't care enough to stop his plans. In fact, it gets even worse. They humiliated them, and the reputation of their village was ruined by the false accusations that are spreading like wildfire. They put pests on their crops and they barely had enough goods to sell but her Father has always the solution to cope up with the problem but this scheme, burning the entire village, lost many lives and Sienna's Father couldn't cope up with his own death anymore. What's terrible is that after a week, the mayor incorporated their land and marked it as private property. He announced a big project to be built there without concern for the lives wasted there.

He made a comment about the incident and acted as concerned as he could. He promised to take good care of the victims by sending them to the vacant building to have a place to stay, and the media was praising him for his kindness and sympathy. Sienna loathes the innocence of people, and her silence screams for justice.

That person is worse than a nightmare, and people like him will be condemned to prison, but Sienna can't do anything. With her status, her voice will surely be invalidated by the powerful hands of corrupt officials. She was well aware that she had no match for the mayor's power and that people like her would always be in the shadow of cruelty and injustice.

From that very moment on, she knew who’s the real enemy.

“Why are you crying? "