The Sun

There was a time when the sun rose each morning like a faithful companion, unwavering, bright, and warm. People didn’t worship it, not anymore, but they depended on it without question, as though it were a right they had inherited and not a fragile miracle. They scheduled their lives by its arc across the sky, they planted crops by its warmth, and in every culture across the globe, there existed some unspoken gratitude for the sun, even if it was buried under traffic horns, business meetings, and phone screens.

It began so slowly that most didn’t even notice. Winters stretched longer than they should have. The first frost arrived in early autumn, creeping into September with unwelcome fingers. Summers became less predictable, their heat replaced with an odd, overcast chill. But still, people pressed on. After all, weather had always fluctuated. There had always been colder years, hadn’t there?

They called it climate fatigue at first. An ambiguous term coined by researchers in white coats who stood in front of graphs and digital maps, speaking in cautious tones to camera crews and blinking red lights. They spoke of rising CO₂ levels, of oceanic currents shifting, of polar winds descending south. It was technical, sterile, and easily ignored. The politicians watered it down further, "temporary cooling,” “seasonal disruptions,” “normal variability.” The world was too busy to worry. There were stocks to trade, festivals to celebrate, movies to release.

But then came the fires...

It started in the west, massive wildfires devouring entire forests, blotting out the sky in thick, black smoke. Ash rained down on cities hundreds of miles away, blanketing cars and windowsills with gray dust that never seemed to settle. People wore masks not to prevent disease but simply to breathe. For weeks, the sun was reduced to a dull red smear behind layers of soot. Skies that were once blue turned sepia, as if the world had been dipped in old film.

Still, life continued...

Until the fires spread. Australia. Brazil. Parts of Europe. Then Alaska, then even Siberia. The Earth was burning in places that were never meant to burn.

Scientists warned of The Veil, a dense accumulation of aerosols and soot particles forming in the upper atmosphere. They explained it in diagrams, trying to make the invisible visible: the particles blocked solar radiation, cooling the Earth unnaturally and reflecting light back into space. Slowly, steadily, the sun dimmed. Crops failed in unpredictable cycles. Solar energy dropped to a fraction of what it once produced. Trees lost their leaves and never grew them back.

And then, one day, it simply didn’t rise...

People thought it was a glitch. Perhaps an eclipse, or volcanic ash, or a freak celestial event. But no explanation came. The hours passed, and the world waited. Streetlights buzzed on. Phones lit up with messages like “What’s happening?” and “Still dark here” and “Sunrise missed in all hemispheres.”

Governments declared states of emergency. Scientists scrambled to produce artificial light sources large enough to support food growth. A new global agency was formed: SOLIS—Solar Light Integration System. Billions were funneled into massive orbiting mirrors, artificial suns, synthetic chlorophyll.

But it was too late...

The Earth had turned its face toward a sky that no longer responded. 

Religions clashed in chaos, some called it punishment, others a test, others still a prophecy fulfilled. Fear spread faster than any fire ever had. Riots broke out in cities stripped of their sleep cycle. Without the sun, time became meaningless. Circadian rhythms crumbled. People forgot what morning was supposed to feel like. Depression swept through the world like a second plague.

The air, once sharp with the scent of dew and wildflowers, now smelled of damp metal and forgotten soil. Trees that had stood for centuries died in silence. Birds flew in confused, desperate patterns before vanishing altogether. Farms shriveled. Livestock perished. And then… people began to vanish too.

Some moved underground—into the womb of the earth, hoping to build cities away from the failed sky. They called them Subsols. Concrete hives with artificial daylight calibrated to a hundred algorithms and memories. Some chose isolation, retreating into what remained of forests or mountains, chasing a fading promise of survival. Others stayed, clinging to rooftops and broken greenhouses, waiting for something that wouldn’t return.

But the worst of it was not the cold. Not the hunger. Not even the darkness.

It was the forgetting...

As the years passed, children were born who had never seen sunlight. Who had never squinted against the brilliance of a clear day, or felt warmth spread across their skin like a silent embrace. They didn’t know what shadows were. Their drawings showed gray skies and hollow moons. They laughed less, moved slower. Some of them had light-sensitive eyes from birth. Their bodies adapted to the gloom.

And with each passing year, memories of the sun faded into myth. Stories became currency. The few who remembered became the new storytellers. They spoke not just of heat, but of color. Of blue so sharp it made your heart ache. Of sunrises that spilled gold across mountain tops. Of dusty village roads glowing orange at dusk. Of children who once danced in sprinklers, their laughter echoing into twilight.

One such storyteller was a mother, living in a dim room with her son, in a world where the sky no longer changed. And one evening, as lanterns buzzed and the air hung heavy, her child asked,

“Ma… what did it feel like? The sun?”

The room was silent, save for the quiet hum of the old heating coil, and the boy's voice had been so soft she almost thought she'd imagined it. But he was still looking at her, wide-eyed, curled up beneath layers of patchwork blankets, waiting—not just for an answer, but for a world he had never seen.

The mother smiled gently, and after a long breath, she began—not with facts, but with melody. A whisper of a song, passed down like a secret between worlds. A memory wrapped in rhyme.

Oh, child of mine, with lantern eyes,

You've never known the blushing skies.

But let me paint, with voice and rhyme,

A world that danced in golden time.

The sun, my love, was morning's kiss,

A tender touch the shadows miss.

It warmed your skin like lullabies,

And drew the blue out of the skies.

It wasn’t just a ball of flame,

It had a soul, it knew your name.

It slipped through curtains every day,

And chased your sleepy dreams away.

It smelled of grass and sunlit rain,

Of dusty books and windowpane.

It made the river sing in light,

And turned the raindrops into flight.

It danced on fields where children ran,

It baked the earth, then cooled the sand.

And in its arms, the trees would grow,

And lovers walked where flowers blow.

But more than warmth or glow or gleam,

The sun was hope, and love, and dream.

It made the world feel soft, alive,

It whispered: “You were born to thrive.”

People smiled more in its grace,

They'd squint but laugh, face to face.

Strangers waved just passing by,

Because kindness bloomed beneath that sky.

So how does it feel, the sun, you ask?

Like joy unwrapped from morning’s mask.

Like running barefoot through a stream,

Like finding colors in a dream.

Like being held without a word,

Like every song you’ve never heard.

It feels like peace, it feels like play…

It feels like life before the gray.

The boy was quiet for a long time after the song. He didn’t move or speak, only stared at the flickering lightbulb above them as though it held all the answers the world refused to give. The boy reached for a piece of old parchment paper—creased, yellowed, saved from a time when such things were easy to find. He took out the dull-tipped colored pencil his mother had traded for weeks ago. And slowly, carefully, he began to draw.

The mother watched, saying nothing. His hands moved in slow, thoughtful strokes, his tongue peeking out slightly in concentration. He sketched a house first, small but neat. Then a winding path, then what must have been a tree, though he had never seen one. He shaded a sun in the top corner of the page, bright yellow, radiating warmth in crooked lines, as children do. Then he drew himself and her, standing hand in hand on the little porch.

When he was done, he turned the page toward her, his eyes expectant and bright.

“Ma,” he asked gently, “did it look like this?”

Her heart stilled. She looked at the drawing, at the wide open sky and the way he had colored it with imagination, not memory. The tree looked like a lollipop. The house leaned a little. The sun looked more like a star. And yet it was beautiful.

She smiled softly, touched the paper with her fingers, and said,

“No, my love… it was warmer. It had a glow… not just in the sky, but in the air. In people. You could feel it, like something humming just beneath your skin. Your drawing is lovely—but the sun, when it touched the earth… made everything alive.”

The boy’s smile faded. He looked back at his drawing, then at the dull, shivering bulb above them, and he asked in a voice that barely rose above a whisper:

“Can’t we… escape from this, Ma?”

That question.

That quiet, aching question had no perfect answer.

She closed her eyes.

She wanted to lie. She wanted to tell him yes, any day now, everything would change. But lies had a weight of their own. And she had promised never to add more weight to his tiny shoulders.

So instead, she sat down beside him and told him the truth.

“Some people did escape,” she said, her voice careful and low. “The ones with power, the ones with vaults full of money, they built their own light. Artificial suns. Giant domes with glowing ceilings. They live in bubbles of warmth while the rest of the world shivers.”

The boy’s brow furrowed.

“And others,” she continued, “those who still believe in the Earth’s way… they live in the forgotten places. Near rivers and caves, trying to learn from nature, hoping that the old balance will return. They grow food with their hands, speak to the soil. They have very little, but they still have hope.”

He swallowed, his eyes dimming.

“And people like us?” he asked.

She hesitated. Then answered plainly.

“We can’t afford the fake light. And we don’t have land to escape to. So we… wait. We hold on. We survive.”

The silence that followed felt heavier than the darkness around them. The boy looked down at his drawing again. The yellow sun seemed suddenly absurd, like a fairytale out of place in a world that had forgotten magic.

“So we just wait?” he said. “Forever?”

She could see it, the way the seed of sorrow had taken root in him. It wasn’t tantrum or tears, not even fear. It was worse. It was quiet surrender. She couldn’t let that grow.

So she got down on her knees in front of him, gently taking his small shoulders in her hands. Her eyes met his, level and unwavering.

“Listen to me,” she said, her voice trembling, but fierce, steady like a flame refusing to die. “Out there… there are people who haven’t given up. Real people. Scientists, thinkers, wanderers—people like your father used to be. They’re working day and night, even in the dark, even when the world forgot them. They’re trying to bring the sun back. Or at least, bring back a way for us to live in its place.”

“They haven’t stopped. Not because they have to. But because they care. They’re heroes, love. Not the kind in capes or stories. The kind who bleed, and break, and still keep going.”

She reached up and touched his forehead.

“It might take time. Maybe more than we wish. But one day, someone will find a way. And when they do, I want you to be ready. Not bitter. Not broken. But strong enough to stand in the light when it returns.”

And the mother spoke the truth: there was once a scientist who never gave up. His name was Prajwal, the one who kept trying when the whole world had stopped. Prajwal was not famous.

He wasn’t the kind of scientist who appeared on television panels, whose name lit up symposium banners or corporate think tanks. He was the kind that stayed up until dawn without noticing, scribbling formulas on old scraps of packaging, muttering to himself while stirring instant noodles over a lab burner. He worked not in sprawling labs, but in the corner of what used to be a government observatory, now crumbling and long-abandoned.

But he was the one who didn’t give up...

When the sun failed to rise, Prajwal did not wait for salvation. He did what he’d always done, he questioned, he calculated, he tried. And he kept trying.

In the earliest days of the Permanent Eclipse, while most were still frozen in denial or chaos, Prajwal worked. He focused first on atmospheric purification. He believed the layers of soot, ash, and pollutants, which some called The Veil, could be cleared. He designed autonomous drones that would release high-altitude seeding agents, designed to cling to carbon particles and drag them down with controlled condensation bursts.

He called it Project Arkasha, named after his mother.

It worked in simulations. But in reality, the drones couldn’t reach the necessary altitude without solar charging, and the energy cost of manual launches was impossible to sustain alone.

Still, he kept going...

Next came Project Releaf, an ambitious attempt to engineer genetically modified algae and lichen that could survive in the cold and feed on carbon-rich air, releasing clean oxygen and possibly thinning the upper atmosphere.

He built bipods—hundreds of them—filled with his cultured samples. He placed them in abandoned towers, underground railways, caves, and mountain valleys. But they died, too cold, too little light, too unstable.

He tried mirror satellites.

He tried ground-based thermal scatter devices.

He even tried recalibrating ancient solar telescopes to act as targeted reflectors, primitive synthetic sunlight concentrated in dome-shaped farms.

He ran out of copper wiring. Then lithium. Then hope.

So he turned to the people. He opened communication channels across surviving servers. Posted public calls to action. Shared blueprints, scientific notes, and instructions in ten languages. His words reached thousands:

“This is not the end. If ten of us build a drone, that’s ten drones. If a hundred of us grow algae, that’s a hundred chances. If we share light, we might bring the sky back.”

But there was no response. The rich had sealed themselves in domes, too insulated to care. The poor… they had no strength left for hope. And the rest? They shared his work. Retweeted. Forwarded. Admired. But they didn’t act. Everyone waited for someone else to lead the way.

Prajwal would read comments like prayers that never became action:

“This is amazing.”

“Wish I could help.”

“Tagging my cousin, he’s into tech.”

“Please, someone do this.”

He began to see that apathy was the true shadow that had replaced the sun. One night, after a long attempt at launching a failed cloud-penetrating ion beam into the upper stratosphere, Prajwal collapsed at his workstation, soaked with sweat and battery fluid. He stared at his wall. Covered in charts, satellite decay maps, and particle dispersion models. At the center of it all, circled in red: Method Omega.

It was the last plan he believed could have worked. Method Omega was simple, in principle: a global network of kinetic generators powered by people walking, pedaling, and moving. If every person contributed small motion-generated power, it could run purification towers, artificial sunlamps, and maybe even drive high-altitude balloons seeded with nano light reflectors. It was slow, communal, and scalable.

It required everyone...

But everyone had stopped listening...

He remembered submitting the schematic to the global shared net. For days, he watched the map. One blip in Argentina, two in Norway, one in Kerala. Then nothing. There was no follow-through. People downloaded it… and then disappeared.

“They don’t want shared responsibility,” he muttered. “They want a hero. Or a savior. Or a lie.”

So Prajwal shut the idea down. He turned off the feeds. Shut the comms. Folded the poster-sized diagram for Method Omega and placed it into a sealed box labeled:

“For those who still believe.”

And he stopped asking for help. That night, he walked out into the frozen dusk. The world lay beneath a ceiling of dust and sorrow. The stars, like the people, had stopped showing up. Prajwal looked at the blackness above and said quietly,

“If I can’t fix this with them, I’ll fix it without them.”

He no longer designed systems that relied on the many. Now, he built for one. He turned his lab into a bunker. A heart of invention in the dark. He scavenged solar panels to convert them into photon amplifiers. He began working on a light seed, a small, self-sustaining orb that could mimic the sun’s spectrum in isolated bursts. Enough to grow a plant. Enough to light a home.

Enough to prove something...

Not to governments.

Not to corporations.

Not even to the people.

To the child he once saw in a refugee camp years ago. The one who had never seen a leaf, but still held one painted on a torn plastic sheet. That memory guided him more than any theory ever had. Prajwal didn’t know if he would live to see the sky turn blue again. But every day, every circuit he soldered, every fiber he weaved into light, he believed that maybe, just maybe, the world would see the real nature again.

Prajwal had always believed that the Earth could heal itself, if only humanity would step back long enough to let it breathe. In his younger days, he too was drawn to the grandeur of invention. Like many others, he once dreamt of building “a new sun,” a replacement, a solution, a shining declaration that human brilliance could undo human mistakes. But over time, after watching failure upon failure, after hearing silence follow every signal he sent into the void, that belief faded.

He realized something humbling. 

They hadn’t lost the sun because it died...

They had lost it because the Earth had shielded itself from them...

The Veil in the atmosphere wasn’t just soot and smoke. It was a shield born from centuries of exploitation. The planet had thrown up its arms in protest, wrapping itself in silence. And no artificial glow, no clever trick, no lab-grown light could coax it back.

He observed frost-covered moss that still clung to northern cliffs. He studied migratory birds that had returned, not because the world was warm, but because it was finally quiet. He saw seedlings push through ash, reaching with fragile faith for a sky that still held memory.

Nature hadn’t given up.

So why had humans?

He began working on a project he never named. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t shareable. There were no satellite uplinks or LED prototypes.

It began with soil....

He learned to detoxify polluted ground using bacterial cultures that could survive extreme cold. He developed natural filters from fungi to capture and dissolve carbon-heavy particles in air pockets. He worked with ancient seeds—preserved before the Great Burn—and tried growing them in deep-rooted compost systems warmed only by geothermal pockets.

He realized that nature didn’t need replacing...

It needed room...

He had found the record by accident, buried in a forgotten server of plant extinction logs—files catalogued before the Collapse, digital bones of a world that had once named every leaf and fungus and seed.

It was called Pyrosia Vanta.

A towering, smoke-feeding species. Once found only in volcanic regions of Central Indonesia and parts of Eastern Africa. It grew fast, fueled not by sunlight but by residual heat and carbon-heavy air. It had evolved near volcanic vents, where most life couldn’t breathe. And it was said to grow tall enough to pierce cloud cover, sending up branches like black spires.

They are extinct, the records said. But Prajwal had hope. It was the perfect candidate. If it still existed, even a single specimen, it could be the key to healing the atmosphere. Not just absorbing carbon… but climbing back into the sky with living fingers, tearing apart The Veil that choked the planet.

All he needed was a seed...

And so, for the first time in many years, Prajwal sent one final message into the net. Not a call to action. Not a warning. Not a blueprint.

A plea.

“I don’t need your help building anything. I don’t need followers or praise or donations.

But if you’ve ever seen this plant… if you’ve walked past it, if you’ve heard of it in your village, if your grandmother once grew it by her window;

Tell me. That’s all.

Let me do the rest.”

He attached images from the archive. A rough sketch of the tree’s branching structure. A list of alternate names in old tongues. He even described the smell of its sap—like burnt cinnamon and wet stone—a detail found in a dusty journal from a long-dead botanist.

For days, nothing...

Then… small pings.

A message from a grandmother in Papua.

A boy from a remote island who remembered a black tree by the coast that ‘smoked at night.’

A farmer from Ethiopia said the bark was used long ago to boil water when firewood was scarce.

Prajwal messaged them one by one. Thanked them. Pleaded for samples. Sent instruction packets for safe extraction and shipment. He paid in knowledge, in gratitude, in promises.

Not all arrived...

Some were lost.

A few were fakes.

But one capsule made it through. And then another.

Inside, wrapped in banana leaf and beeswax, was a handful of Pyrosia Vanta seeds. Old. Withered. But real.

He studied them like relics. And then he tried. First, he planted them in heat-regulated soil using geothermal vents he had carved himself. He built mist chambers around them, replicating volcanic humidity. For weeks, they didn’t sprout. But then—one night—he walked in and saw a sliver of black pushing through ash. It grew. Fast. Almost frighteningly so. He harvested its sap. Studied its leaf structures. Fed it heavily contaminated air.

It didn’t just survive.

It thrived.

Now he had proof, but not volume.

Prajwal sent the data to the few remaining botanists, ecologists, and biotech engineers still reachable across the globe. Some replied with wonder, some with skepticism. But a few offered their help, not out of glory, but out of grief and guilt. Together, they developed a hybrid method, not to alter Pyrosia’s nature, but to preserve and strengthen it. They used tissue propagation to replicate healthy shoots. They infused it with frost resistance from alpine moss strands. They bred versions that could root in both volcanic soil and polluted urban ash.

He didn’t want a super-tree...

He wanted a survivor.

Once he had a dozen healthy saplings, he began mapping. He worked with climatologists, studied wind and atmospheric density data, and calculated strategic bio-intervention points:

The High Scarps of Ethiopia, where winds dragged soot toward the Atlantic.

The Volcanic Arcs of Indonesia, near dormant vents still warm beneath.

The Ruins of Western Russia, where the sky had thinned, but the air was still.

He studied how wind carried pollen. How water runoff could spread roots. How deep carbon absorption could trigger micro-changes in cloud structures.

He didn’t dream of miracles...

He built a network, tree by tree. Region by region.

He called it:

Operation: The Sun

Because he believed the trees would climb back into the sky.

And maybe, pull the light down with them.

He didn’t broadcast this.

Didn’t go viral.

Didn’t wait for applause.

He left instructions with a few scattered scientists. He sent saplings to a handful of forest tribes who still knew how to grow without machines. He documented everything in analog journals, sealed against the future. Then he looked out over the mountains, where his first dozen trees now pierced the horizon like charcoal spires. His voice soft, cracking with emotion, as he kneels to the soil and whispers...

Not man-made light...

But Earth-born forgiveness.

places his hand on the ground, eyes closed

Please... dear Earth…

Forgive us.

Let us feel the warmth of the sun again.

Tell him that we missed him and remind him we’re still waiting...

There was no great explosion, no switch flipped, no angelic burst tearing through clouds. Like a whisper long-held in the lungs of the earth, finally exhaled. It began with the wind.

Children in a hill community, once part of old Nepal, woke one morning to find the air moving differently. It wasn’t biting or dry. It was warm, tinged with something sweet.

The trees had spread. Quietly, steadily, like grief turning into grace. Pyrosia Vanta forests had taken root across volcanic belts, urban ruins, and high mountain crests. Their black trunks rose like spires in mourning, but their branches, woven with thick, soot-absorbing leaves, reached upward with ancient knowing. And they worked.

They fed on what had nearly killed the Earth.

They didn’t just clean the sky.

They earned it back. 

Day by day, the thick layer that had once choked the sky began to thin. People stood in silence as the clouds returned, drifting like ghosts remembered. In the frozen lands, they felt it: a faint warmth brushing their skin. It wasn’t bright yet, but it was real. And then, in scattered places, the light of the sun appeared, soft, golden, trembling like it had forgotten how to shine.

The birds came next. Silent for years, they returned in pairs, circling the black trunks of towering trees, pecking curiously at bark that pulsed with life. And beneath the tree, for the first time in years, flowers bloomed. People began to emerge from bunkers, shelters, and caves they had dug to escape the cold. Some were afraid. Some didn’t believe it. But when they stepped outside, they saw the shadows, the real ones. Not just flickers from electric bulbs. But shadows cast by sunlight that the new generation had not seen.

At first, it was faint. A paleness on the horizon. But it grew stronger day by day, as if the sun, too, was shy, unsure if it was welcome.

But when the trees didn’t burn…

When the birds didn’t flee…

When children danced on stone paths under that trembling light…

The sun stayed. 

The boy who once asked his mother, "What does the sun feel like?"

Now saw its rays falling gently across their small home. He gasped, then screamed with joy,

"Mama! Mama! Come quickly!"

His voice echoed through the quiet shelter. His mother, startled, rushed in.

“What happened?” she asked, breathless.

The boy pointed, eyes wide, voice trembling with wonder.

“Is… is this how it looks?”

For a moment, she didn’t understand. Then she turned and saw it.

A shaft of sunlight, soft and golden, poured through the crack in their ceiling. It fell on the floor like a blessing. Dust floated in it like glittering stars.

She froze.

Her hand flew to her mouth as her eyes filled with tears, not of grief, but with pure, overwhelming joy. She knelt beside him, her voice breaking as she whispered,

“Yes… Yes, my dear son.

This…

This is how it looks.”

The boy laughed, spinning slowly as he looked around. The colors, the light, the gentle shadows. The real beauty.

Not from a drawing, not from a story,

but from the world itself...

He finally understood.

The warmth.

The glow.

The meaning behind his mother’s song.

A sky remembered the light that had been forgotten for years. And the people had changed. They didn’t go back to cities of smoke. They didn’t build towers that stabbed the clouds. They planted. And they protected.

For every hundred trees Prajwal had planted in silence, the world now planted thousands of different plants in song.

No more megastructures to mimic nature.

Now, gardens became cathedrals.

Forests became their home.

And the children, those who had once drawn suns from stories, finally saw them with their own eyes. There is a recording. A memory passed down across the new villages, carved into seed vaults and sky-scrolls. It is the last known message from Prajwal:

“The sun was never ours to build. Only to welcome.

And if we darkened the sky through greed,

Then let us clear it with humility.

The Earth has never asked for worship, only respect.

It is not technology that saves us. It is memory, kindness, and time.”

No one knows if Prajwal lived to see the first full sunrise. But in every black tree that rises, in every petal turned to the east, in every child’s voice screaming joy at dawn, he is alive. People began sharing the story with others of the sun’s return, and of Prajwal, the man who never gave up in the form of the following song:

There was a time the sky went still,

No dawn, no light, no golden hill.

The sun grew quiet, turned away,

As if the Earth had nothing left to say.

The rivers froze, the trees went bare,

The world forgot the warmth of air.

And hearts grew cold, and voices died,

Until one man still stood, and tried.

He asked no throne, he wore no crown,

He knelt in ash, with eyes cast down.

He searched not heaven, but the ground,

For seeds that still could turn things 'round.

He found a tree once thought long gone,

That fed on dark and reached for dawn.

He planted one, then two, then ten,

Believing light would come again.

He didn’t build a brighter sun,

He gave the Earth a chance to run.

He healed with hands, not flame or steel,

And asked the sky to learn to feel.

Not power, not pride, not gleaming gold,

Just roots, and rain, and quiet hold.

And when the trees began to rise,

The sun looked down…

and cleared the skies.

The veil grew thin, the warmth returned,

And flowers bloomed where fire once burned.

The birds came back with songs anew,

And children laughed beneath the blue.

And no one cheered, no banners flew,

Just quiet tears for something true.

They did not say, “The world is won,”

They simply whispered:

“The sun… the sun…”

And do you know what Prajwal was doing when the whole world was praising him and singing songs about him?

He lies beneath the sky he helped restore, hands behind his head, the grass beneath him soft and cool. He listens to the river’s hum. The whisper of leaves. The songbirds' morning hymn.

A breeze brushes across his face, warm, golden, kind.

And for once, he doesn’t speak.

He just feels.

The sun has returned.

And he finally rests...