Dreams 2

They brought us back to where we last saw any sign of life.
The abandoned cave.
The whole nine kilometer walk back, Victoria or Ling Ling was complaining about the walk as she always would.
Tracy was running ahead looking for coconut trees with Janice while Junior walked beside me playing with my unloaded glock.
Ritchie and I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't want to be brought out from this place.
We couldn't comprehend why they wouldn't want us to look for them...
We got back to the cave where Ritchie and I set our packs down and made a fire while Uncle Jeff watched carefully almost like a school child. Ritchie and I shared our ration packs around, to our surprised they had food. But not much of it.
Mostly cans of sardines and baked beans.
Grandma told us about the creek flowing into a large shallow pond where a huge amount of perch could be seen.
So I let my inner kid take over and i made a spear out of a thin branch i found and went spear fishing.
Victoria decided to come along with me taking off her shoes telling me the lake was just as sandy and beautiful as the beach.
As we reached the lake, I saw thousands of fish rush towards the other side of the meter deep lake.
I immediately ran ahead of victoria and after ten minutes I caught three foot long perch worthy of a filling dinner.
But as I sat down on the sand to dry the shorts I was wearing, Victoria started talking about how we used to have so much fun as kids trying to catch the fish in grandma's pond.
How we used to watch the fireworks from the balcony of my room...
How we used to have shaving cream, baby powder and lotion fights.
But all through the conversation on the sandy banks and back to the cave I could only think of why they wouldn't want us to find them.
The only thing that I could think of was that they didn't want us anymore.
As if they ran away from us.
And now that weve found them, we were just going to simply take a chopper back to Singapore and join the front line again?
Dinner was great, lots of laughs and smiles almost as if the war never existed.
As everyone went to sleep, the women and girls in the house while the boys in sleeping bags under the huge sandstone ceiling, I decided to go for a walk.
Back to the crystal clear lake where Victoria and I talked about our childhood memories.
The moon was huge, bright enough to light my way down the creek to the warmth of the sandy banks.
Sitting there, smoking one of the millions of cigarettes Uncle Jeffrey brought over.
I thought about how I ended up being in the army, how Ritchie came with me and why we joined. I thought about what we were going to do, what life was going to be like when we went back home...
Rachelle's footsteps weren't heard untill she was only a few meters beside me.
She quietly sat down and shared the same view of the moon as I.
As the crickets grew louder and the trickling of the creek melted into a song, Rachelle ask why we left Malaysia in the first place, why we didn't go back for a holiday after two years ago.
She knew we wanted to. But she also knew we couldn't, because of the war.
"Did you us?" she continued.
"Course we did, thats why Ritchie and I joined the army." So we could make sure you guys were safe." I replied in an almost dissapointed tone.
"Did you miss me?" She asked.
"Rachelle, I..." She interrupted with a giggle and started to walk into the lake.
I followed her into the comforting warm water where the fish were asleep and no one else was there to interrupt the little world we entered as we always did before.
The darkness only lasted a few hours before I found myself back in the camp falling asleep to her breathing beside me...