Falling Leaves

• Adna Mahmutovic, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

Late into the night, the snow fell and fell.
It covered everything within its reach until all was veiled with a blanket of white. It stretched as far as it could, tucking everything beneath it. However, this blanket wasn’t a comfort of warmth, no, not at all. It chills you to the marrow with its frost and shakes you until all your prized leaves and those beloved flowers you cherished for so long, is snatched from you. Through the whole of spring and summer it was your pride, your joy. Now gone, all the effort put to waste when the contentment of your creation was so mercilessly obliterated from your sight. You then gaze up to see a puny leaf dangling from your branch. A glimmer of hope flickers in your eyes only to be extinguished by the whirling wind, blowing through the woods, grasping your dear, little leaf, taking it into its clutches. You stand there gaping. Dumfounded. Your eyes linger on the speck of a leaf until it too, altogether vanishes like the rest…
It is all you can do, to hold yourself from overflowing with tears. All your emotions swell up in your throat. Your chest feels fit to burst with all the grief and sorrow tormenting your little heart. The pain…unbearable. The circumstance…humiliating. “My strong branches filled with lovely, lustrous leaves, aromatic flowers are substituted with…with…” Trying to utter these words were the most challenging of all. Your trembling lips try their best to continue. You look back at your ‘branches’ and try to correspond with what you are viewing. After a few attempts, you manage to croak the rest of the sentence: “Now I am left with bare, naked arms faded and discoloured of the richness of beauty I had once possessed!”
The white landscape that surrounds you depicts the colourless soul. Your empty soul. You feel so ashamed at what you have come to be. If only you can wilt away and never have to face this. If only you can wilt away and escape this world full of complications. If only you can wilt away and never be you. Hide under a rock and never come out.
But if only you knew the true happiness of life, the wonders and miracles in this world that we are all a part of. There is a beautiful future awaiting you, awaiting all of us. All we have to do is venture towards it. There is much more to life than the few obstacles that build us into stronger being. If only you knew…
You start to realise over time that an end leads to new beginnings, pathways ready for you to explore. That the end of your present leaves, allows for new fresh leaves to begin growing and for more lovely flowers to bloom. Winter would soon end and will be followed by spring and summer. Autumn will appear and the end of the year would draw another to commence. You understand that this is nature. Beautiful nature. All that it should be. Perfectly balanced and in harmony. This is life. This is your life!
You finally begin to know…