For thirteen years

- Adela? What is this? Matthew asks, looking at the asphalt in surprise

His sister, Maia, approached him curiously and looked surprised at the place indicated by the boy.

-Adela ?! Matthew shouted, this time impatiently

Adela was sitting on the porch of the house, trying to clean up the dust that had settled. She got up and walked over to her siblings, a little irritated that she had been disturbed.

-What happened? She asks frustratedly when he gets close to the two.

- Look! What is that?

Adela leaned over to see better what the two were showing her, and at that moment a tear ran down her cheek, touching the dust on the road. Among the pieces of cement on the destroyed road, a green plant could be seen, with a thin stem and a white bud. The flower was suffocated by the surrounding dust and was still trying to cross the asphalt.

-Adela? Are you ok?

-Yes, she says in a weak voice, choked with tears

-So, what is this, Adela?

The girl took one last look at the plant and then turned to her brother and sister with crying eyes and tears running down her cheeks. She sat down on the cold surface of the road and she urged the children to sit next to her and they, curious, listened.

- Not long ago things looked different here, people were different, houses were much changed, but the most different thing is the fact that before there were trees, there were flowers in almost every yard, before we didn't have to buy air, before the trees offered us everything that we needed.

- Adela, but what are flowers or trees? Maia asked, looking curiously at her older sister

- This is a flower, Maia, look, this is the first flower I've seen in the last thirteen years, look!

She was happy to see the flower, excited to see that there were more people planting flowers, that there was someone like her parents. But the memory of the last time she saw such a flower overwhelmed her and she remained for a few seconds with her eyes closed imagining what it was like to see such fragile flowers coming out of the snow in her backyard.

- Long before you were born, this city was much greener and it was not wrapped in dust and full of cement blocks, our mother used to have a rose garden, some much bigger flowers, with spikes on the stem and bright red petals. She loved them so much that she went daily and read them from her storybooks. Dad had many trees with green leaves behind our house, in the summer I spent hours sitting among the thick branches and looking at the city from above. Our father made sure that the trees brought us fruit that we ate in the fall. The trees lost their green leaves and they turned orange or yellow, and in winter, the branches remained empty. The fruits were much better than the ones we bought from the fruit shop once in a while. They loved nature, they would stay out all day if they could and they fought to protect it. They knew how important it is to people, they knew what would happen if all the plants and green spaces disappeared.

I remember, she said, almost blurred with tears, I remember how I helped my mother take care of the flowers and how in the evening we sat on the grass, neer to the trees and ate dinner. Sometimes I forget that this is how our yard used to look like, sometimes I forget what it was like to run among the trees on the fine and cold grass. That was the most relaxing and liberating feeling, to be barefoot on the grass. Then in the winter when it was still snowing, we built people from the snow and mother was covering her roses to be guarded. It used to snow with big flakes and the snow was spreading everywhere, it was like stepping on clouds when you went out in the garden. And it was so cold, then I hated that the cold was biting my cheeks and reddening my nose, I hated that I had to enter the house so as not to catch a cold, but now I would give anything to see the snow again and feel the cold again. And then in the spring, when the snow was melting in the warm rays of the sun, flowers appeared just like the one behind me, we called them snowdrops and there were dozens all over the yard.my father's trees blossomed and the whole yard had an unprecedented scent. I've never smelled that after... All this before …

- What happened, Adela, with the snowdrops and the snow, did mom and dad take them when they went to heaven?

- Yes, that's about it, said the girl, overwhelmed with memories and pain. Just the memory of her parents, that sound that stuck in her head from the day she last saw them, all this made her want to scream, but she knew she couldn't.

She turned to the fragile flower and kissed the still unopened bud, she wanted to let it grow there but she knew that the Security agents were going to pull it out before the first sunrise, so she carefully pulled it out of the cement pieces of the road. She looked around, remembering that they might have been seen by someone who suspected they had planted the plant. She took the children and hurried home, closing the door and leaving the flower on the kitchen table.

At night, after putting the children to bed, she remembered the snowdrop that she had left on the table. She took it and put it in a glass of water in front of the photo with her parents.

Tears flooded her eyes again and she remembered her life before, before the Security came to power, before the new rules that forbade any plant that was not grown on special farms, before when they were not forcing the population to buy fresh air. She remembered the day her parents were killed for planting a tree behind the house. After the new regime ordered the cutting of all the trees calling that they will use the wood to build houses for the population. She remembered how scared she was when they took her parents and she was left holding her twin siblings, who were just babies, in her arms. She remembered covering her mouth with her hands so as not to scream when she heard the two shots. She remembered how those people left in a big car, taking her parents and the tree behind the house. 

That was the last time she saw a snowdrop, when she went out into the yard after those people left, and next to the place where the tree was, was a snowdrop with its blood-stained white petal. She had kept it hidden since that day.

When she recovered, she looked at the picture with her parents, and knew that her parents would have wanted her and her siblings to live in a world where they could breathe and they could actually see a tree or a flower. She took this snowdrop and placed it in the photo frame, next to the other one. Then she decided it was her turn to take action.