Heart Of Helium

• Teresa Lin, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

Our world is fill with stories of amazing people who have accomplish ground-breaking things. Things we see in the news. Our world is one of rapid change, and in time small aspects of our world has been forgotten. At it should naturally be, but in this little story that would not take more than three minutes. Let me tell you a tale of the people who are the most beautiful in this world. People who do not always strive to leave a mark behind. To be remembered. The irony is, the marks humans leave behind are too often scars.
Our story’s protagonist, like all things good and bad in this world, begins with a girl. In this particular case, the girl was accompanying in a hospital. Her mother has been trapped in a coma since a fortnight ago. The doctors simply do not know when she would wake. They told her tomorrow she will be able to donate her corneal if she wishes. Both the doctor and the patient were calm.
“Mummy, open your eyes and see. The sky tonight is a charcoal canvas with splashes of white stars scattered across it. Remember that time, when we sat on that hill after dad left and we counted the stars…” Her voice was soft, as it always has been for the past four year, seamlessly orchestrating a picture of beauty and harmony.
One of the nurses by her side wept silently, the sky outside was a cold, muted grey canvas streaked with jagged lightning.
When the morning came and the man dressed in white coats came to take her away, she was humming a tune softly, drowned out by the commotion of surgical lights, closing doors and a certain smell of death and life.
The transition for the corneal took another two weeks.
For the two months after that, this was a common sight seen by all hospital staff.
A mother sits with her daughter in the court yard, the mother softly telling her of lush green trees, an azure sky with puffy white clouds and leaves the colour of opal fluttering in the air. Whilst humming a soft tune, perhaps to herself or her daughter or just the air.

"A drop in the ocean
A change in the weather
It’s like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert
But I’m holding you closer than most
‘Cause you are my heaven"

If only the girl could see, she would've seen heaven spread out in front of her.

Six snowflakes

A hand-woven sundress

Ribbons of sunlight

Sky the colour of kaleidoscope

A simple heaven