Dawn: A Short Story

 This is a story I wrote one night.  It is not autobiographical, (it is totally written from a fictional perspective) but some of it is allegory for my own life. Just take it as it is. I have been thinking a lot about sorrow and anger and sadness. So many people face so much hurt, and most people do not even realize it. This story grew out of my feelings and my desire for people to find hope.

She was alone. Always alone. She lived a quiet, peaceful life in her own home in the capital city of Peremedra. Peremedra, how I have thought about it in the dark reaches of the night when I have wished to see it once more before me. How the girl loved that place. She used to wake up and stand in the pantry, which had a window to the East. The sun would come through the window into the darkness of the stone pantry, and it would fall gently upon the girl, who stood shivering in her nightgown. She would bask in its rays and laugh for the joy of life.  It was perfect.
But then war came and Peremedra was overrun by the wicked Sarretts. They blew up houses just for sport and refused to listen to the cries of the widows and orphans.  They took up residence in the girl’s little home and forced her to work for them, cooking and cleaning always for the big, rough Sarrett soldiers. And they never even asked her her name.
The girl wept much, but she wept the most when they filled the pantry window with dirt and rubble and forbade her to bask in the rising sun. The Sarretts hated the sunrise, for their black creed operated by the dark of night and the weak light of the moon and they saw the sun as an enemy of their purposes.
The girl fell from grief into a black melancholy and from black melancholy into despair. She wilted from the hard work and from the lack of sunshine, for she was kept busy all day and her only leisure time was at night, when she fell exhausted into bed by candlelight.
She used to cry to the darkness: “I was alone and I was happy. Now I am deprived of light and laughter and even though my house is full of people I am still alone. But this aloneness had no joy in it.”
The darkness gave her no answer, and the girl went about in numb despair.
She decided to give up. She knew that the Sarretts kept  poison in the big cupboard in the corner. It had used to be her book cupboard, but now it was dirty and dented and full of foul things. The Sarretts kept the poison for the victims of their black night rituals. The girl stole the poison and plotted the ending of her weary days.
She would die at sunrise. She cared not for punishment now. She would sneak out before dawn and stand on the parapet of the city wall and greet the sunrise with her lonely death. Perhaps, she thought bitterly, the cruel mockery of her death would stir the Power of the heavens. The Power of the light and the day and the morning.
Her plan went well. She escaped the house as the Sarretts were sinking into drunken sleep after their nightly evil.
She walked through the silent streets in the cold darkness.  The houses turned their black windows on her and were gone as she strode on. She climbed upon the wall. In the East, she could see the first pale streaks of dawn. She would wait until the first rays to die, she decided. She sat down on the cold wall and dangled her chilly legs over the side of the crumbling parapet.
A noise from behind startled her. She turned and faced a boy. This boy was her own age with a face full of despair, clasping a long knife, evilly curved.
“At the dawn?” said the girl.
“Yes,” said the boy.
“Shall we sit and wait together?”
“Yes,” said the boy.
They sat upon the wall, and for the first time, the girl felt that she was not alone. It was the strangest feeling. Here was another person who felt the same despair she did, who wished to mock the joy he had once known and could never know again. But what did it matter? The dawn was coming fast, and with it her death. She gripped the poison bottle. She noticed the boy’s grip tighten on his knife.
They watched the sky turn from gray to purple, from purple to pink, from pink to gold. Then the sunrise shot over the horizon, almost unexpectedly. The clouds were lit in flaming light, and even the dirty and broken wall was golden. The blazing light blinded the girl. She tried to grasp her bottle, to twist the cork, but her fingers were too chilled and the bottle fell from her hands. She heard the crash it made as it smashed onto the pavement below the parapet.
The boy was having the same struggle, but he had finally got the unwieldy knife into position and was just gritting his teeth.
Then the girl decided to live. The golden sunrise of the dawn filled her soul and hope blossomed from the long buried seed. She turned to the boy and with a strength that surprised even herself wrested the knife from his hand. She  threw it to the ground with the same force that the boy would have thrown it into his heart. Then he looked at the dawn and she saw the hope bloom in his soul.
They went home to their different places in the city, where the Sarretts caroused in drunken depravity. But they were not alone anymore, for they knew that the Power of the heavens had spoken and with the dawn had given them hope. They knew that no cruel mockery could crush that seed of hope, and that no aloneness was so deep that it could not be dispelled.
When you get to the end of yourself, my friend, that’s where you find something beyond yourself.
There is hope. I know, for I was that girl.