Divided and Reunited

Once there was a divided country. It was split into North and South，and no one was allowed to cross the border that was a huge wall stretching all the way across the country.

Ricky was a boy from the North. In the North it was pretty much cloudy all the time, and it never rained - it snowed. When it snowed, Ricky would go out and make snowmen and sledge down hills. He was six years old.

Jamie was a boy from the South. In the South it was hot and sticky, plus it rained a lot. When the rain came down it was so warm Jamie's mum would get his older brother Cyrus to collect the rainwater in a tub for a nice hot bath. Jamie was also six and Cyrus was eleven.

One day, Ricky was playing by the wall when he heard a thump on the other side.

"Hello?"

There was silence for a bit.

"Hello," Jamie answered.

"What was that thump?"

"I slipped in my melted ice-cream."

"Ice-cream doesn't melt." (Ricky did have ice-cream, but it was a different kind to Jamie's. Name one thing and there would've been a Northern company for it and a Southern company for it. Unless it was something like flip-flops or jumpers.)

"Well, it does here."

"What else is different over there?"

So Ricky and Jamie got acquainted, but they never saw each other's faces. At first they talked all about what things were different, like snow and rainbows and how the South had more ice-cream flavours.

"I think you'd really like the starfruit flavour, Ricky."

Then they grew up a bit, and they started talking about what they'd do when the wall was pulled down(Ricky's dad was always talking about this.)

They also talked about what they'd do when they finally met each other in person.

Then they grew up a bit more and they started talking about Ricky's crush. "Her name's Eliza and she's really pretty, Jamie. She's got gorgeous blue eyes."

One day, Jamie made the trek to the wall one last time. He was seventeen. Cyrus had long ago graduated from university.

He rapped on the wall to catch Ricky's attention, and they decided to talk about what they'd do when the country was reunited. They revised their plans for the future (but Ricky still wanted to see a penguin). They talked for hours and hours and hours and...

Jamie forgot about the curfew.

It was very sudden for Ricky. One minute he was chatting about ice-cream and the next he was in shocked silence as a blast of gunfire was heard from another side. It went on and on for what seemed like forever, until finally, it was over.

"JAMIE!" Ricky yelled. He didn't care if anyone heard him and he was executed - he'd just lost one of his best friend's.

"Jamie...you can't go yet...we were meant to have starfruit ice-cream, and hug penguins, and shower in the rain...Jamie..."

The worst thing about was he couldn't tell anyone, so no-one knew why he was so gloomy the next day. Not his mum, not his mates at school, not even his beloved Eliza.

He stayed like that through the years until he was twenty-five. He got a job in a building company, and one day he was told to demolish a block of houses near the border.

As he sat in the digger, he couldn't remember why he was so particularly gloomy today. He demolished half of the houses on the block before he realised why.

Today would've been Jamie's twenty-sixth birthday.

To Robert, one of his fellow workers, he stopped in the midst of demolishing another house.

"Something the matter, Ricky?" Robert called.

He saw him smile. In the five years he'd known him, he'd never seen him smile.

Suddenly, Ricky turned the digger away from the half-demolished house and started careering towards the wall border at high speed!

"RICKY! HAVE YOU GONE MAD!?" Robert bellowed, giving chase to the rogue digger. "GET YOURSELF BACK HERE NOW!"

Nothing was stopping Ricky now. "FOR JAMIE!" he yelled gleefully as the digger smashed into the wall.

Now it was just as easy as demolishing the houses had been. The bricks crushed and crumbled as Ricky ripped another section down.

People could both see and hear what Ricky was doing. Soon there were people swarming all over the wall, tearing it down with anything they couldn't find, even their bare hands. It wasn't long before people from the South were joining in too. Diggers from the South were better, and in less than an hour there was nothing but rubble where the wall had been.

"FOR JAMIE!" Ricky heard someone else shout.

From the digger, he could see the person was a man who was maybe around thirty years old.

Ricky got down from the digger and asked the man, "Is your name Cyrus?" (Jamie had told Ricky about his brother, but Cyrus was never told about Ricky.)

"Yes, how'd you know?"

"Did you have a brother called Jamie?"

Cyrus stared at him. "Yes, and I still do, though he was nearly killed when he forgot about the curfew at seventeen-"

"Take me to him. Now," Ricky ordered.

Like I said, it was warm in the South, and in five minutes Ricky had stripped his vest off and he was still sweating buckets. He was glad when Cyrus finally beckoned him into a small house that looked quite old.

Leading Ricky upstairs, Cyrus called out, "Jamie? There's this guy from the North wanting to see you..."

Jamie hobbled out of his room. Ricky noticed one of his legs was a prosthetic and he only had one eye.

"Jamie?"

"RICKY!?"

He stared at Ricky in amazement. "Cyrus...has the wall been torn down?"

Cyrus nodded. "I'm surprised you didn't hear."

"YES!!!" Jamie yelled. "Come on! I'm going to get a PET PENGUIN!"

"Just a minute," smiled Ricky. "I want a starfruit ice-cream."