5 Minute Freewrite Day 446: Happy

It was the night of the Starfall Festival, some months after my graduation from the Magic Academy, when I found myself in a small unremarkable town in the northlands. I went there looking for the cold I always enjoyed, but also to spend a quiet last month of the year. I wasn’t counting with my first night there being the one when everyone shook up their gruff exterior to dance, eat, drink, and generally partying while expecting the biggest annual meteor shower.

Well, noisy, but interesting I said, and since sleeping was going to be extra difficult either way, I decided to walk around. Some time passed and the general joy overwhelmed me, so I tried to find a nice calm corner to sit down. I did find it, a big leafless tree on a hill slightly outside town, but what I didn’t expect to find was a small girl, of no more than 10 years old, sitting on a thick blanket over the snow and with her face unmovingly pointed towards the sky.

Hello?, is it someone there? –she suddenly said, and when her face pointed at me, I knew that the night’s darkness wasn’t the only thing keeping her from seeing me getting so close. She was blind, her pupils a milky white.

I presented myself and told her why I was so far from the festivities, she did the same. She told me that at the time when everyone was preoccupied with enjoying themselves, and their working eyes only purpose was to catch the light of the falling stars, she didn’t feel like being near them. She somewhat understood their joy, but didn’t, couldn’t share it, and as such, she looked for a lonely spot to spend the night, face pointed towards that she so wished she could share with everyone.

I stayed quiet for a while, not judging, just thinking, and said to her I know a way you could see the meteor shower. She asked how, and I told her to face me while I muttered some words and touched our foreheads. A small light shone, the first signal from the illuminated skies. I pointed towards the heavens, and the little girl was seeing trough my eyes. That night I felt the truest joy in all my life up until now, and made a little girl truly happy.