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@eitan (Revised original prologue). I get what you said about the Romans burning homes, but I explain why this happened later, and why it could happen.

 

The little girl’s chest steadily rose and fell, her coarse sheets just barely brushing her closed, dark lashes. Her lips turning upward, and face smooth, she dreamed of their goats, and clouds.

That was cut short as her arm was grasped, and her body was jerked from her bed.

“Chena!” Her mother’s voice was urgent, “Get under your bed. Hurry girl!”

Chena began crawling beneath her pallet, her mother shoved her the rest of the way. A mass of straw, old rags, and creepy crawlies followed her less than a second later. “Stay here Little Bee. Lay flat, I know it’s hot but bear with me. And under no circumstances; no matter what you hear, do not move or make a sound.” Her mother then let the mattress fall over her daughter. Chena then felt the pad getting heavier and heavier.

Chena sucked in quick, dusty breathes, eyes wide in the darkness. Screams and crashes vibrated through the floor. Tears rolled down her soft cheeks as the little girl heard her mother’s sobs. Chena sucked in gulping breaths. Straw flew into her throat, and Chena muffled her coughs into some dirty rags.

Eloha help us! she screamed in her mind as sweat plastered her dark brown hair to her neck.

There were more crashes, more tremors. The Roman dogs were there. Chena knew it as much as she could tell bugs shared the hiding place with her.

The child’s ears tingled, at the sound of her father begging someone. His usually diplomatic voice was despairing, and frantic. “Merenda, sir, please I beg you in your Roman wisdom don, don’t hurt my wife!? She, she is with,” those were the last words Chena heard her father speak.

Chena bit her tongue to keep from joining in the resounding screech her mother let shake the night. Had they hurt her mommy? Daddy, Levi, or Malachi? What would happen to Ruth, or Naamah?

Please Eloha? she quaked, crying more, and more. Crashes resounded, her life breaking apart. Jehovah will they burn our home? Will they make us all slaves? Will they burn mommy, or poppy? Are brothers safe?

Chena hugged the dusty ground, trembling, and finding it hard to breathe under the weight, and with the hot air. Tears ran from her eyes like hot springs. Then she froze.

Chena heard the clay jar mama, and papa had given her last Purim smash. The baskets, mending, rags, and jars covering Chena’s bed were chucked aside. Then the pallet was flung aside. Chena jumped, eyes widening like saucers. Her lips parted to scream but Fear clutched her throat so tight it cut off her air. She clenched her eyes shut, Oh, L-rd Jehovah? I love You! Help us! Help Your children!? Please?…

The strips of rags, and hay laying beside her were lifted and sifted through. The man grunted, and one large foot stomped beside her head, shuffling through the mess. Chena’s eyes popped open. Large toes in the issued sandal ‘boot’ greaves, and cleaves. Three inch spikes glaring at her.

Couldn’t he see her? Why hadn’t his foot crushed her face yet? Or kicked her?

He abandoned the pile of filth which had been stuffed under Chena’s bed. After he left several other soldiers to the pile of debris and searched as well.

The cur of Rome! More tears snaked down Chena’s cheeks. She kept her small hands cupped over her mouth as she watched men move about as if she were invisible.

Her papa was just a simple farmer?  He wasn’t outspoken. Chena loved him, and trusted him, and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt him? Because the Romans were vile, and needed no reason.

What if her parents hadn’t paid their taxes? What if they were going to murder them all?

The men casting glances over their shoulders drifted her home, their sounds fading. All the marauders had moved outside, where there were a growing amount of curses and her mother’s screams.

Get out. The words beat inside her brain and chest. Run now! Leave! Hurry! Get up and flee!

“But what if they kill me?” she whispered in a blub.

More curses railed outside their mud house.

She didn’t wait for the whisper to come again, Chena just obeyed. She got up from the bower, legs working like blocks of wood beneath her as she scampered to her feet. The room was silent now, and dark outside. Aside that is, from the glow of torches, and curses still railing in the side yard.

Had they found her brothers? Or had Eloha spared them as well? What of her mommy, and daddy? This all flashed through her mind in just seconds.

Then one question was answered as something sticky, and wet splashed onto her running foot, and leg at their threshold. Chena may have screamed, she may have not. She could never recall, but in any case none of the men came back to get her. His stomach had been cut open, entrails and blood covering the floor.

Her forehead wrinkled, eyes wide, trembling hands clapping to her face as she stared at her daddy. Then crying, muttering words she could never remember she knelt down beside him, her knees leaning into the pool of his blood as she cupped her father’s stricken cheeks in her hands. His dark eyes stared up at her unseeing. Forever frozen in pain.

“Papa.” She whispered, her whole body convulsing over and over. “Oh Papa!”

Then Malachi was there, lifting, then pushing her in course whispers to run into the tall grass surrounding the property; to wait there for him. When she couldn’t move Malachi spanked her hard, and she ran. She ran, and ran.

At some point she fell down, and couldn’t get up. She sobbed, whole body shaking, pushing her face into the dirt. Cubit high blades of grass surrounding her in all directions. Her father’s image haunting her un-blemished mind. She convulsed, wishing her mother’s arms were around her. Or even Malachi’s. She didn’t know when, but finally no more tears would come, so she lay a while hiccupping, using her arm as a pillow, and fell into a besieged dream.

If she had been awake Chena would have heard a cry in the late night. She might have known it was her brothers, she might have not. Malachi had bolted out of the house when the smoke from the fire the Roman’s had lit got too thick. One of the officers had chased the youth but a minute before he was grabbed, and taken him away.

Truly only Eloha could save His people.