Quiet Enlightenment

Bonus, Chapter 1 - Happy Birthday (August 2020)

Saturday, August 1, 2020

The sky was a deep gray and the clouds started to release a thin mist across the air. Two people, a older teen girl and a slightly younger teen boy ran across a field leading to a fence with a gate. The boy opened the gate for the girl to run through.

They ran through the graveyard until they arrived at a specific marker. The two stood there and looked at the marker as they confirmed that they had the right spot. The girl wiped a few tears from her eyes as the boy placed a pile of flowers along with a small envelope. The two stood there for a while before getting the courage to quietly leave the same way they entered.

The gravestone belonged to a young man named Elias Aiden Conner. A boy who lived a quiet life until he met a group of friends who changed his world in the last few months leading up to his tragic demise in July 2014. Even though he was part of this group for only a small fraction of his life, the group made it a pact to never forget him. This day was important, as it would be the day poor Elias would have celebrated the completion of his second decade of life.

While his friends (along with his brother) wanted to get together and celebrate this boy's life in person, a terrible plague held mankind hostage during the year of 2020. Instead, the group decided to write letters to be mailed to his first girlfriend to be placed upon his grave in Oregon.

The first letter was from the group's defacto "leader", who always went out of his way to extend friendship and warmth to Elias.

Elias,

I can't believe it's been six years since you left. Man, where does the time go? Did you see what happened at our high-school graduation a couple years ago? My mom pulled some strings and they had a memorial for you. Cameron said that almost everybody was in tears. I know that I had a hard time seeing through mine.

I've been taking care of Mia, Cameron, and I've even been doing my best to keep an eye on Lucas. Things have been a whirlwind for me since graduation. It's amazing how life can change just like that. I have a wife and a kid now, and I really wish you could meet them. I'm still plugging away at college courses, and for a while I was a restaurant manager. With this pandemic, and all of the other stuff going on, Mom decided to close the restaurant in Portland. I feel bad for our employees, but I agree with her on the importance of our safety over making money.

I'm not going to lie, man, I'm scared as hell right now. But I'm going to be strong, because I have my friends and family to keep me going. I just hope that this will all be over soon enough and my son will be too young to remember this nightmare.

I'm still holding out hope that there is something out there after life, and that we'll meet again someday. But until then I'm going to keep thinking about you and missing you every day. Happy Birthday, Elias.

Love,
Kenton

The next letter was from the boy's first girlfriend's next boyfriend, who just happened to view the boy as the older brother he never had.

Bro,

I'm glad that you're away from all of this bullshit going on in the world right now. I am so sick of this. Masks, keeping away from people, living in fear that I'm either going to get this crap or get the crap beaten out of me because I wear a mask. Oh, I did have one racist douchebag try to start a fight with me because I was wearing a BLM shirt. I told him that both my best friend and my godson are black, and that any haters could fu... well, you get the point.

I didn't get to "graduate" like normal people do, thanks to COVID. I'm freaking sad about this, but I'm gonna be starting community college soon. Oh, guess what? I'm in an online class with both Mia and Kenton! Not gonna lie, I'm kinda nervous as I'm afraid I'm going to bring them down.