A Love That Lit The Darkness

Noah met Elara in the summer of their seventeenth year. The sun was always too bright in their sleepy little town, and the afternoons too quiet—until she arrived. Elara had recently left the city and brought with her an aura of mystery as well as a sketchbook filled with dreams. She first caught Noah's eye at the town library, where she was tracing the spines of books with her fingers like she was looking for something she had previously misplaced. The kind of boy who carried his heart too openly in his eyes, he was quiet and awkward. Beautiful, wild, and impossible to predict, she was the storm. They were nevertheless drawn to one another, like the moon and the tide. They met again a week later at the annual summer fair, under a canopy of fairy lights and laughter. She was sketching the carousel horses, their manes frozen in time. He smiled shyly and gave her lemonade. Everything changed after she gave him a momentary break with a music-like laugh.

Their love did not begin with extravagant acts. It was in the small things: in the way she laughed at his dry jokes, in how he always remembered her favorite kind of jellybean. They dreamed aloud and named clouds for long stretches of time while lying on her house's roof. Elara would draw stars before they appeared, and Noah would tell her tales that convinced her of the power of magic. But not every summer is endless, and not every story has a happy ending. Since she was a child, Elara had had a heart condition that had quietly existed within her. She didn't talk much about it. When she finally told Noah, it was under a sky filled with fireflies. "If I were a firefly, I would want to burn the brightest, even if it meant fading sooner," she stated. Noah didn’t cry then. He promised to give her every bright moment he could as he held her hand. So they danced in grocery store aisles, kissed in thunderstorms, and shouted their names at the edge of the lake. Their own constellations were created. They made it look like there was still time by lighting sparklers in her backyard. She gave Noah her sketchbook on the night of her eighteenth birthday. Pages about him—his laugh, his eyes, and the way he looked at her as if she were the only thing that mattered—were packed inside. She had written on the last page: “Thank you for showing me what it means to truly live. Be assured that I left with love in every ounce of my being. Two weeks later, Elara was gone.

The town felt too quiet again. The afternoons were too still and the sun was too bright. However, Noah did not forget. He carried her past with him like a flashlight in the dark. On her birthday each year, he would go to the lake and throw a paper lantern into the air. Not to mourn—but to celebrate. To remember the girl who lived like a firefly.

The time passed. He grew older, his world expanded, but a part of him stayed seventeen. stayed with her on that roof, naming the clouds. He would also occasionally, just occasionally, observe a single firefly blinking in the distance when the night was warm and still. He would grin and mutter her name. "Good evening, Elara."