Hope

Hope- Oneshot

The young girl sat on the grass in the dwindling half-light, although she didn't notice how quickly the light of the late summer evening was fading. Streaks of red, orange and yellow stretched out across the sky as the sun, which had previously illuminated the garden with a halo of golden rays, slowly sank behind the row of houses at the end of the road. Still, she did not realise as she stared down at her hand, which was closed round a piece of crumpled paper. She was having a silent debate with herself- should she open the paper out and read the words so carefully chosen? Or should she just put it back in the drawer next to her bed, where it had been left since the day she received it?
Finally summoning enough courage to face reading the lines she could clearly remember, she opened her hand and flattened out the paper. It was a poem. To anyone else, that was all it was. But not to her. To her, it was the most treasured possession she had. It contained crystal clear memories from what she considered the best time of her life.
She was sitting beneath the large oak tree that they had sat under, together, the previous summer. She cast her mind back, replaying each small memory in her mind, as if she was watching a TV show. Except it was stuck on fast forward, because now, that was what it felt like, and she couldn't catch up. She tried desperately to hold on to each one, to stop them slipping away. But it was like trying to hold on to water; evening after evening of just sitting and talking slipped from her grasp. Eventually, she came to the very last one: the time she had dreaded the whole summer.
She tried not to think of it as she sat, now in darkness, tracing each silver letter with tears running down her cheeks. She attempted to fill her mind with joyful thoughts- like seeing each other again, spending each and every day together. But as the darkness came, the dark thoughts came with it- saying goodbye, not seeing each other for a whole year, the worrying, the waiting for something- anything- to happen... But nothing. At first, they had exchanged letters, sometimes pictures. And although she continued to send them as often as she had to start with, his became infrequent. She received less and less as the year progressed, until eventually, they stopped altogether. The last thing he had sent her was the poem from seven months ago. She had remained hopeful for a while after the letters had stopped, but gradually began to give up any hope of seeing the familiar, untidy writing.
She smiled through her tears as she recalled how long it had sometimes taken her to work out what had been written. It was one of the things she loved most about him. Her smile grew as she remembered how he commented that she reminded him of an angel- her long blonde hair shone like the sun, and her green eyes were like the depths of the sea of the coast of the island in Scotland where he had grown up. He had complimented her sweet, caring, and gentle personality, and she had replied with much the same thing- she thought he was polite, quiet, endearing...
      A sudden chill brought her crashing back to reality. She shivered as a wave of loneliness nearly drowned her, and and wrapped her arms around her knees tightly. As she rested her head on her knees, her mind began to wander again, and she dreamed she was holding onto him forever, and never letting him go. She might know nothing about where he was, but at least she had pictures. She might know nothing of why he suddenly stopped writing to her, but at least she had the letters he had sent kept safely in a box next to her bed. They might not have made any memories together that year, but at least she had the memories from the summer before.
      She didn't know what had happened to him- if he was okay or not. But until she received bad news, she had hope.