Light up!

In light, there's hope

"The mere sight is magnificent. It burns, but it stands for hope. Fire for desire!" he said, looking at the shining candle. "That is indeed something. What's your desire?" his friend Chloe asked. "To let the hope live," he replied.

The two friends were standing on the deck of his majestic new home, overlooking a lonely hut, lost in the faded browns and dulled blacks of the woods. "Why did you call me here?" Chloe asked him. "I wanted to tell you about that little boy who lights the lamp at his doorstep, every single day," he said. "That boy who bicycles miles to deliver my newspaper?" Chloe asked him, her left index finger pointed in the direction of the light. "Precisely, yes." 

He began, "The little boy often knocked at my door in the morning, back when I lived a few miles down the road, and smiled at me. That boyish charm! I didn't want to ask him why he did that every day."

"Then?"

"Months and years passed. He never changed. And those mornings when I didn't answer the door, he stuck the newspaper in the window sill."

"Interesting."

"Again, I never asked him why. His smile just filled me with hope. I feared that if I talked to him, he'd never come by again." 

"You never talked or wanted to talk to him while you paid him his fee?" Chloe asked, amused.

"Never. He smiled then, too. He took whatever I gave him. The one time I overpaid, he paid it back with the delivery the next morning."

"This continues till day? Wait...you moved here for him?" Chloe was lost, albeit hopefully. 

"I have nothing in this world ever since I lost my wife. I live in her memory, I live with her memory, with the hope that some day she would come back to me."

He took a deep breath and resumed.

"A couple of days ago, when this house got listed 'For Sale,' I grabbed it. She always wanted to live away from the chaos of the city, amidst nature and peace."

He continued..."I noticed that he lights this lamp at his doorstep every day. For the first time ever, I wanted to know why. I looked around, found nobody. But I noticed a little drawing on the ground where he stands his candle. It is of a woman and man, with smiles on their faces. Stick figures," he said and fell silent. He recovered from his gasp and  continued, "And that was it. It struck me. When he first delivered the newspaper to me, I was doing a painting of my wife and me holding hands, standing in the smiling-shining Sun, with a little note at the bottom, 'I miss you.'" 

The two let the coolness in the breeze fly past the emotion and the warmth fill their hearts.

"That still doesn't explain..." He cut Chloe short as she began to ask.

"Explain why he lights the candle? Maybe the drawing reminds him of...his parents...and maybe he misses them, too," he explained.

The two looked back at the brightly beaming light and breathed a moment of calm.

"Who raised him, though?" Chloe asked.

"Hope, I guess." he said.