The Birdsong My arm shook as I wrenched my scolded hand from the bubbling broth in front of me. The wind howled around me as I shook it trying to lessen the feeling that a white hot poker had just dripped liquidated pain on my skin. As I did so, a cry of mournful song issued from above my head. I looked up, but whatever had made the noise had vanished. I wrapped my still burning blistered hand in my handkerchief that was barely recognisable after twenty long years of being used to wipe off dirt from my face. Twenty years ago, that wasn't the only difference in my #life. Twenty years ago, I wasn't on the run. On that fateful day that seems so vivid it could have been yesterday, I was sat staring wistfully out the kitchen window, wrapped up in a threadbare rug in my cosy little thatched house when- Boom! The whole cottage shook as a fist banged on the door. I ran to my bed. It wasn't because of the villagers scared stiff I could see in the cobbled street, It was that my mum didn't answer the door, and I knew that means that something was wrong.