Light Bulb: A Hero
The light dimmed slightly before brightening again, the light seemingly unable to decide if it would die today or fight for yet another day to brighten my night. I silently thanked it as it brightened again. The price of a simple light bulb was unfortunately more than I could spare. If that light gave in and decided to die then I’d be wallowing in self pity in the dark, alone, empty and contemplating suicide. All because one light bulb decided to die and leave me in darkness during the lonely nights in which I work without purpose or enthusiasm. Sighing in relief I continue to type, to write my story, to live a life in my mind beyond imagination and far into the realm of impossibility. I am the author, in my story I am God and I dictate how to world functions, progresses, the people that populate it, how people interact, the fashion, the good, the bad, the evil and worse. It’s an escape, it’s salvation and it’s the only way I’m qualified to earn money. My escape from reality becomes someone else's escape from reality and we all run away from our trouble for a short time together. The light dimmed again and I stopped writing for the hundredth time tonight before it brightened and I continue writing once more.
The snow fell harshly across the rolling hills blanketing them in a sheet of white. The crops had come half yield last season and granaries were only a third full for the long winter. Dread hung in the air as the villagers watched the first snow of the season fall and turn our field into promises of death and hunger. Breu’s mother shut the window shutters and shivered as she felt the cold wind double in it’s intensity. A bone chilling cold that cut through the flesh and threatened the life of any who dared to try and weather it.
It was Breu’s ninth winter, she’d earned his name after the last and if she survived the next he’d earn his sword. The lands of Sernth weren’t kind to the weak and were fatal to the foolish. Breu would be strong for her mother insisted it. Yet the cold winds blew and the very God’s seemed to seek her death and the death of her brethren this season. Half would die, the other would suffer and be tempered on the anvil of the Gods or perish along with the rest.
The light dimmed again and my fingers froze as they moved to begin the next sentence. I clenched my fists and worked the muscles in my hands as I tried to distract myself. The light brightened and I escaped back into the pages.
The cutting cold winds battered the walls and rattled the windows. A single log burned in the stove to provide what little warmth it could to keep Breu and her mother alive. The food had became scarce and fireplaces went unlit as the dread turned into the pressing weight of inevitability. Breu and her mother spent the nights hugging close to feed off one another heat and somehow weather the days with their ever dwindling supply of firewood and food.
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“Stay strong Breu. Stay strong.” Breu’s mother insisted as it became more and more evident with each passing day that there wasn’t enough food for both of them.
Breu’s mothers hug grew in strength even as she ate less and less.
“Eat, mother, eat! I don’t want to be alone!” Breu insisted and shook the ruined vestige of skin and bones that was once her beautiful mother.
“No my dear. You need it more than me my daughter.” Breu’s mother insisted even as she felt her gaze fill with yearning whenever she looked upon the five loaves that remained.
Breu and her mother argued daily. Breu insisted that the food be shared and they die together while her mother insisted that Breu live on and find happiness. Neither would yield and both were stubborn beyond words. So it came as little surprise to Breu that when she woke up one day her mother was nowhere to be seen and scatterings of snow laid about the door. Breu’s mother had killed herself so her daughter might live on and knowing this Breu cried as she couldn’t bring herself the fling the door open and run after her mother. Breu had said she wanted to die together yet she couldn’t bring herself to after her mother had killed herself for her. The winter passed and spring brought life and sorrow to the all but dead village. Breu’s mother was found by laying just outside the door and Breu, with what little strength remained in her ruined body buried the remains beneath the thoughing earth. The Gods had tested them and they had survived. The cost of this survival however was more than any of them had guessed and all but a few fractured families remained. Many had frozen in their beds, their storage of food left untouched and many more had starved. Few of those that survived wished to remain and those that did were haunted by the unforgivable things they did to survive. Many of the survivors cursed the Gods, the more zealous thanked the Gods for their mercy and the haunted begged for forgiveness for indulging in the flesh of their fellows. Yet the Gods gave no sign of acknowledgement for the villagers and they expected none for the Gods were fickle and no mortal could understand them.
The light dimmed once more and I brought my hands away from the keyboard expecting these to be the last word I wrote for some time and possibly ever. I could have not written what I did, the villager could have all been happy and the heroine could have had a happy childhood with her mother, father and elder brother. Yet I killed them all, I killed her brother first as I’d decided he would run into a bear and me mauled to death, her father would be killed shortly after by the same bear, they died bravely and with courage to instil a set of values into my heroine that would push her forwards in the days to come. Her mother would die for her so that she could live on and so that when the time came she would do the same as any hero or heroine should. The heroine's life would be harsh for only the most foolish of heroes lived an easy life and only the most foolish of heroes died a stupid death or dared to live on after their time was up. The heroine would fight for all that is right and good while doubting that there was any good or righteousness at all in the world and her final act would be a time of enlightenment. Enlightenment that if there was no good and righteousness than that she would have to be the memory, the monument that stuck in the people's memories as a symbol of them. To be a hero is a powerful thing, yet a hero doesn’t live, a hero dies. The light died out and plunged me into darkness.