Moving Forward

-Edit- If you want a good song to listen to while reading this, here: [link]

a piece when Sara and Benjamin are reunited during the death march between Auschwitz and Dachau. They were separated when they reached the gates of Auschwitz around four months before, and she thought that he was dead until this moment. For those of you who are confused, Benjamin still dies, just not at auschwitz. He dies of Tuberculosis the day before they're liberated from Dachau.

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"How do you know when what you feel is real? I've heard this question many times, and even asked it myself. There is no real answer to it, either. Every case is different, but I will provide you a few signs:
When you can finish each other's sentences, when you can simply sit in silence and be perfectly content with only their breathing, when you have no idea what to do with yourself when they're not with you. I don't believe there is ever an exact instant of realization; it's like walking from a dark room into the sun. It's a brief moment of blinding light, so much so that you feel the need to cover your eyes, and yet you know you never want to go back into that darkness again.
But I can tell you this; when I heard the voice, my whole world stopped. The ragged uniforms around me froze. I turned slowly, afraid to see the same pale, haggard faces instead of the one I had been wishing for.
"S-Sara…? Is that you?"
Slowly… slowly. At first, all I saw were stripes, grey, white, blue. But then… tawny hair, cut short by a pair of rough scissors, a soft face, green eyes with a ring of auburn around the pupil.
"Benjamin?" I whispered.
His eyes grew wide. "Sara!"
We moved towards each other, like two people in a dream. Nothing mattered anymore except holding each other, touching once another for the first time since we were separated. We collided with such great force that my breath was knocked from my chest, but I threw my arms around him and felt his own arms encircling me in a protective arch. Though we could not stop walking, we held onto each other, the only piece of home we had left, and when he lifted me up, no amount of force in the world could have pried us apart. I felt his cheek against mine, his nose burrowing into my neck, and I held him as tightly as I could. He was so thin; I could feel his ribs pressing against my uniform, which only made me hug him tighter. After all these months believing the other was dead, here we were, stealing a moment just for us. It was impossible. Statistics, logic, everything told me it wasn't possible. But it was:
Benjamin was alive.

Sara, Benjamin, writing, art (c) me
texture (c)