A Brighter Morning

• Alexei Dooley, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

The little boy had blue eyes and rosy cheeks and auburn hair. That was the most I could remember about him for a long time. His eyes were little flecks of the bright summer’s sky placed inside his head for all to admire. He had cheeks that looked like roses plucked from the garden. He had neat auburn hair that was always brushed over to neatly take it from his beautiful face. He was always polite with people he did not know well and always loud with friends. He would shout and run around like any child would. His voice was soothing at all times. I hardly remember everything except one phrase. It was his favourite. He would repeat it every time I saw him, and that is likely why it has stuck with me. It plays in my mind like a broken record, “I’ll see you on a brighter morning.”
That was the last thing he had said to me, too. He told me he would see me on a brighter morning, but on the brightest morning, the death-bringer, dressed as a schoolboy’s uncontrollable fingers, saw him first. It was not until a week later that I was told, but I knew it already. I had noticed that the sky no longer shone like his eyes would. I had noticed that the roses in the garden were no longer as red as they used to be because they were no longer alive in his cheeks. The world was filled with darker days. There were no more bright mornings after his last day. Everything was cloudy, everything was dark. The world’s life had been sucked entirely out of it when he was taken from me, and I would do anything to see him again.
Today, though, the morning is bright. I am yet to leave the warm comforts of home, but I can see that the morning is bright. It has not been bright in so many years. For once the sun has decided to show its face.
“I’ll see you on a brighter morning,” I whisper to myself. The silent whispering is not usually enough to conjure an echo, so it surprises me to hear one. I hear my words thrown back at me in the same gentle tone and silent nature, but in a different voice. I think- no, I know I remember that voice but I do not want to give myself too much hope, but I feel something brush against my arm and I cannot help but look.
Beside me is my little beacon of hope. Beside me is the boy, with his blue eyes and rosy cheeks and auburn hair, yet to be kissed by the reaper of lives. He smiles the smile I had wanted to forget because it brought me to tears, and for once I do not cry. I hold his hand for the first time in years and I rest happy knowing he is mine.