[original] Freedom
Title: Freedom
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Summary: Good things come in many forms. For the little girl with the umbrella, it came in an unexpected way.
~
It is raining.
I step out from the dry, cool supermarket, and am greeted by an endless silver sheet of fine, needle-like raindrops. Both my hands are currently occupied with my foodstuff-laden bags, and I wonder what kind of balancing act I will have to pull off to be able to open up my umbrella and walk home relatively dry.
The heavy bags are set down on the wet tiled floor as I rummage in my handbag for my umbrella. Having found it, I open it up, then return my gaze to the grocery bags. How on earth am I going to carry all of them back with only one hand?
“Excuse me,” whispers a quiet voice from behind me, “but do you happen to need help with those bags?”
Startled, I turn around, and come face-to-face with a pair of dusky brown eyes belonging to my Good Samaritan. Unexpectedly, my timely saviour is a painfully skinny waif-like girl with a battered pink umbrella and a heavily stained dress, extremely wrinkled and at least three sizes too big.
“Shouldn’t you be with your parents?” I ask, “They may be worried about you.”
She shakes her head.
“I don’t have parents. Not anymore, at least,” she says, “Would you like me to help you carry those bags?”
I look into that pair of eyes, shining with honesty, and give in. Upon my nod, she reaches down and grabs three of my bags. For a moment, the extra added weight sets her off balance, but she quickly adjusts and stands back upright.
Gathering the remaining bags, I hold up my umbrella and begin my long walk through the rain, the little girl with the umbrella trailing behind like a shadow.
As we make our way slowly through the onslaught of rain, she ends up walking next to me. Curiously, I ask her why exactly she wanted to help me.
She visibly hesitates for a while, before answering: “Mother used to say that good things come to those who help others.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“Of course! Once, I helped someone watch their bags, and then he gave me cookies,” she said defensively. “Those lasted me and my sister for three days.”
I smile, placated by her simple logic.
We continue to make our way through the rain, and suddenly I notice a sparkly silver ribbon clutched tightly in her hand.
“I found it,” she says after I ask her where it’s from, “in the garbage pile of a beauty shop. I’ll wash it, then give it to my sister.”
She beams happily.
Soon, we arrive at a busy intersection. I am about to cross the road, but then the pedestrian lights turn red and I step back onto the pavement.
The little girl is focused, for some strange reason, on the road in front of her, and does not notice the light changing.
She begins to walk across the road.
Suddenly, I see, from a distance, a black Lamborghini racing towards the intersection, flying across the road like a racing car.
The driver must have noticed the little girl’s pink umbrella, and he slams his hand down on the horn.
She glances up, startled, and her eyes widen as she sees the car hurtling towards her. Her legs tense as if to run, but it’s too late.
The driver slams down hard on the brakes with a piercing screech, leaving dark tyre skid marks on the wet road, but he brakes too late.
As if in slow motion, I see her body fly in a large arc, rather like a fallen butterfly, before she crashes to the wet asphalt, motionless. The pink umbrella clatters to the ground noisily.
Frantically, I make my way through rolling cans of tinned food and puddles of milk leaking from broken milk bottles, to the limp figure lying in the middle of the road.
Her eyes are closed, and I know they will never open again.
Good things come to those who help others, she had said.
“Well,” I whisper to her still form, “what good thing is there now?”
A movement at the edge of my vision catches my eye, and I raise my head to see the silver ribbon twisting and fluttering away in the wind.
Then, I come to realize that perhaps, this kind of end is not as miserable as it first appears to be.
After all, her spirit has been set free. Just like the silver ribbon, free to fly away from this world in which she suffered.
Free from pain, from suffering, from poverty.
It is truly an unexpected ending, for one little girl suffering in poverty and hunger.
She’s been given the greatest gift that Life can offer her, after all.
The precious gift of Freedom.