Dark Days

Avi looked at the tiny settlement at the far end of the valley, and his face, red and sweaty with exertion, lit up with relief.

Maybe this would be it, he thought to himself, a glimmer of hope igniting in his heart, maybe he would be able to finally make some money to feed his family.

As long as the war had been on, his family had never lacked for anything. In fact, they often ended up lending money to their relatives and friends. However, everything had changed ever since the war had ended. Work had become increasingly hard to come by, and he had to spread his wings farther and farther in order to scrape whatever little he could manage.

But it was still not enough.

And that is why he was in this valley, more than 50 kilometers from his own village. He’d promised his son Jacob a wooden horse for his third birthday, and he intended to keep that promise at any cost. He’d even placed an order for it with Saul, the village carpenter, promising to pay him in full before the delivery.

But he had been walking for days now, and each village that he visited had been a disappointment. And now, he had run out of time. Jacob’s birthday was tomorrow, and he was nowhere close to earning enough money to pay off Saul. He needed a miracle to get that money now.

Just then, he saw a faint glimmer from the direction of the village. Someone had switched on their lights. And now, one by one, the lights of all the houses came on, and with them, Avi felt as if his dreams had been snuffed out forever.

He held his head in his hands, and sat heavily on a rock. The sharp edges of the rock dug into his skin, but it was as if he didn’t notice a thing. He just kept looking at the brightly-lit village, missing the dark days of the war which had allowed him to steal freely from any home he wanted.

Photo prompt courtesy Sue Vincent

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Written in response to the #writephoto Prompt – Glimmer at Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo.

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