Somewhere in the Dust

The war was over, or so the grown-ups said. But for the children, war never ends so neatly. It lingers in the stomach’s growl, the smoke-stained skies, the silence where laughter used to be.

The countryside stretched out in broken greens and browns, fields once ripe with harvest now riddled with shell craters. Somewhere in this forgotten patch of earth wandered a boy named Thomas—eleven years old, thin as a fencepost, and sharp-eyed like a stray cat.

He had no mother, not anymore. His father had vanished behind the smoke of some train years before, or maybe weeks—it was hard to tell the difference when days bled together like spilled ink. Thomas didn’t count time. He counted bread crusts, quiet nights, and safe walls. Those were the things that mattered.

He wasn’t alone, not exactly. Children seemed to find each other in the ruins. Like wolves after a forest fire, they sniffed each other out and stuck together. There was Elly, with the voice of an angel and fists like iron; Karl, the self-proclaimed boss who couldn’t read but knew how to steal potatoes better than anyone; twin boys named Drew and Max who spoke in grunts and clung to each other like limbs on the same body; and a little girl named Anya who never spoke, only watched with wide, haunted eyes.

They called themselves the Dustlings—because that’s what they were, children made of ash and wind and survival. Every town they passed through had its own way of rejecting them. Some threw stones. Others threw kindness with conditions. The worst was indifference. The Dustlings had learned to expect nothing and take everything.

Until they found the estate.

It stood like a ghost at the edge of a dead forest—a manor house, crumbling and overgrown, with broken windows and vines clawing up its bones. “It’s perfect,” Karl had declared, and that was that.

They moved in that night. The wind howled, but the roof held. There were still chairs around the fireplace and, miracle of miracles, a working stove in the kitchen. Thomas found a dusty violin in a closet and Elly discovered a room filled with books. For the first time in months, they didn’t sleep with one eye open.

But the manor wasn’t empty.

The old man came out on the third day. He’d been hiding, too—up in the tower like some forgotten gargoyle. His name was Mr. Fallon, a former music teacher, or maybe a conductor. His voice trembled when he spoke, like it had forgotten how to sound anything but lonely.

“You can’t stay here,” he told them, but he didn’t call the police.

Instead, he watched them from the shadows, like a man peeking into a dream he didn’t trust. When Thomas picked up the violin, Mr. Fallon didn’t say a word. When Elly sang as she swept the hallway, he just stood there, hat in his hands, eyes wide with something close to remembering.

On the seventh night, he brought them soup.

“I was a boy like you, once,” he said to Thomas, spooning cabbage into chipped bowls. “War doesn’t end with treaties. It ends when children laugh again.”

And so he stayed. Or maybe they stayed with him. It didn’t matter.

Mr. Fallon taught them music. Not just notes and rhythms, but how to feel again. He gave Thomas the violin properly, fixed the cracked bridge with glue and hope. He taught Elly to sing from her chest, not just her throat. Karl, it turned out, had perfect pitch, though he pretended not to care.

The manor became something else—less haunted, more alive. The Dustlings built shelves from broken doors, grew carrots in the backyard, and painted flowers on the soot-stained walls. They made a home.

But peace is a fragile thing.

One morning, soldiers came—not enemies, not invaders. Just local men in new uniforms, cleaning up the wreckage of war. When they saw the children, their faces hardened. "You can't stay here. This land is being reclaimed by the state," they said.

“We have nowhere else,” Elly told them.

“That’s not our problem,” they replied.

But it was Mr. Fallon who stepped forward then, shoulders square, voice clear. “This is their home now,” he said. “And I am their guardian.”

“You’re not even related to them.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I’ve buried enough relatives to know that blood isn’t the only thing that makes a family.”

In the end, they were given a reprieve—a quiet deal in exchange for silence and the promise to not cause trouble. The Dustlings could stay, as long as they made themselves invisible.

So they did what they were best at: surviving. But they did more than that. They grew.

Thomas became a music teacher, like Mr. Fallon. Elly became a singer, touring small towns with lullabies and war songs. Karl opened a bakery with a piano in the corner. The twins raised animals and Anya became a painter—her walls filled with colors no one else dared to imagine.

Mr. Fallon died one spring morning, with the sun shining and a waltz playing in the background. They buried him in the garden, next to the violets. And every year, they gathered there, the Dustlings, now grown, and told stories about the man who gave them back their childhood.

They never called themselves orphans again.

Author’s Note:

This story is a tribute to the forgotten children of war—those who wandered through ruins, carrying hunger in their bellies and silence in their hearts. It’s about the invisible bonds that form between people who have nothing left to lose, and everything left to give.

In a world fractured by conflict, music, kindness, and chosen family can stitch the soul back together. Somewhere in the Dust is a reminder that even in the darkest places, hope takes root. Sometimes all it needs is a safe roof, a warm meal, and someone who dares to care.