I could still hear their screams echoing in my ears as my horse galloped down a paved path through the forest. I thought about my family, my mother, my father, my older brother, who all worked towards a common cause, exposing government secrets. Which was a very dangerous job, one they felt that I, being the blooming age of fifteen, was not quite prepared for. They didn't want my life to be in danger like theirs. If anything ever happened, they wanted me to be safe, living a brighter life than the one I was living now, full of worry and danger. To our disdain they got caught, and the soldiers broke down the door when we had not been prepare. In the mayhem of having our home rummaged through, my father beaten, and my older brother taken for immense questioning, my mother managed to send me on my way, into a brighter future on the back of sandy, the family horse, along with a bag of supplies. Packed full enough to get me as far as we could without weighing me down. "Go, get as far as you an and never let them take you alive," my mother kissed my forehead sending me on my way. Just to get beaten down in return. I heard her scream as I peered back, with my hair whipping my face, as if it were an echo a gunshot snapped through the trees sending any neighboring birds soaring. The only thing to pull me out of my trance was ducking under a dangling branch that seemed to be on a determined mission to nock me from my stallions galloping back. As I looked up into the trees as I wiped the warm tears from my cold cheek. They seemed to be the only warm thing in this wretched place. The trees were frozen as well, frozen in time. I imagined what those trees looked like in spring, when they're world was warm and full of liveliness. But that time was gone, there was no going back, just like my own path, in my own life. I missed my family, in a time where my father sat at the table in the morning sipping at his coffee, my mother, cooking breakfast, with my brother laughing and making fun of the professors at the university. Then my father would scold him for being disrespectful even though he was a man within himself. Then my mother, who