The Lantern Keeper

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🕯️ The Lantern Keeper
Written by Sohail

In a quiet valley hugged by misty mountains, where stories traveled on the breeze and time moved slowly through fields of grain, lived a boy named Eshan. The village was small—so small that strangers rarely passed through—and yet, to Eshan, it held a thousand secrets.

Each evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Eshan and his grandfather, whom he lovingly called Baba Jan, would walk the winding path from the mosque to the banyan tree, lighting lanterns that dotted the trail like a necklace of stars.

“These lanterns,” Baba Jan often said with a twinkle in his eye, “carry more than flame. They carry forgotten dreams.”

Eshan would listen wide-eyed as his grandfather told tales of villagers who once danced, painted, sang, and dreamed—before time, duty, and fear dimmed their inner lights. He never knew whether to believe the stories, but his heart clung to them like leaves to autumn branches.

One monsoon night, the storm arrived—sudden, fierce, unapologetic.

Lightning tore the sky in angry ribbons. The river swelled and clawed at its banks. By dawn, rooftops were shattered, trees broken, and every lantern lay shattered or drowned.

But worst of all—Baba Jan was gone.

They found only his walking stick, split in two, resting against the banyan tree. No note. No trail.

The village whispered grief. But Eshan… he stayed silent. And in that silence, he grew up.

The lanterns were never relit.

Until the night the voices began.

Eshan had nearly forgotten how to dream, but on that night—ten years since the storm—he heard it:

A soft hum beneath the trees. A pulse. A whisper: “Come home.”

Something ancient stirred inside him. He lit a single lantern with oil saved from Baba Jan’s chest and stepped into the forest trail no one dared follow.

The path had changed. Vines twisted like question marks. Roots reached like arms. But the air felt strangely familiar, as if the trees remembered his footsteps.

After what felt like hours, he reached a clearing.

And there, suspended between silence and starlight, hung hundreds of lanterns. Glowing. Breathing.

He stepped closer.

In the flicker of one lantern, he saw Baba Jan as a child, reciting poetry beside a fire.

In another, a village woman, long since buried, danced with abandon as laughter spilled from her lips.

Another held a tiny version of himself—scraped knees and stubborn pride, writing stories in a notebook he thought no one noticed.

These weren’t just memories.

They were dreams—captured and kept alive.

And at the very center, there was one unlit lantern, its glass flawless, its wick untouched. Eshan knew. It was his.

Tears welled in his eyes. Not out of sadness, but recognition.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a match.

“I remember,” he whispered, as flame kissed wick.

Suddenly, the forest bloomed with voices—echoes of stories lost, names whispered in longing, lullabies and promises that once floated on forgotten winds.

And then… Baba Jan’s voice, firm and kind:

“Stories aren’t kept in pages, beta. They live in light. They guide. They ignite.”

Eshan fell to his knees, his chest heavy with release. For the first time in years, he felt whole—not because he had answers, but because he had been found.

He returned to the village at dawn, not as the boy who had lost his grandfather, but as the keeper of lanterns.

Each night, he began lighting the path again. Not for walking—but for remembering. Villagers joined him, slowly at first. Then in crowds. They brought dreams they had once tucked away—songs, poems, tales, names of ancestors, childhood games.

A new kind of light filled the valley—not just from lanterns, but from voices.

Years passed.

And whenever children asked why he lit lanterns every night, Eshan would smile and kneel beside them.

“Because someone once lit the way for me,” he’d say. “And now, it’s my turn to do the same.”

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This story give the liscen about work hard.