It was a warm evening. Many students were out, strolling around the campus or sitting in groups on the luscious grass, enjoying the final surge of summer. Eloa and Yrial had already walked around the small pond at the center of the campus three times, chatting casually about the day. Finally they sat on some rocks near its edge.
“What was it like, growing up without a father?” Yrial asked him.
Eloa picked up a few pieces of the decorative bark that surrounded the rocks and flipped them lightly, one at a time, into the pond, watching the ripples grow bigger and then disappear. The lights from the building across the pond from them reflected in the water.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “What was it like growing up with a father?”
Yrial laughed. “You’re not getting out of it that easily,” she told him. Then, more somberly, “So it was hard, then?”
Another piece of bark went into the pond. The reflected lights shimmered briefly, then regained their stability. Flip. Splash. Shimmer. Calm. Flip. Splash. Shimmer. Calm. Still Eloa said nothing.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Yrial told him, nudging his foot with hers. “It’s okay. We can talk about something else.”
Eloa was silent for a short time, peering off into the distance. “My mother would sometimes take me out into the country,” he began. “It seemed like we drove for hours, but you know how little kids are. It was probably only fifteen minutes.” He looked at her and chuckled.
Yrial didn’t say anything, but instead just sat quietly, wrapping her arms around her knees, and waited.
“She’d stop at the top of a big mountain. Well, a hill anyway; it wasn’t high enough or steep enough to be a mountain, I guess. We’d get out of the car and we could look down at the city below us. It was amazing, being able to see all of those lights. They seemed to stretch out for kilometers in all directions. I couldn’t imagine that there were that many people in the whole world, let alone in just one city. She’d stand there, leaning against the car, and stare at the city. She didn’t say a word, and I think she probably would have spent the whole night like that, just standing and staring, if I hadn’t gotten bored and started running around.”
He paused and studied the reflections bouncing up from the pond for a moment before continuing. “I didn’t give it any thought at the time, but I wonder now what she must have been going through her head.”
“She was probably thinking about the future. Wondering what would become of the city when all the people were gone,” Yrial offered.
“Could be,” Eloa said. “When we got back in the car, we would drive just a little further, around to the other side of the mountain probably, and we’d stop again. She’d pull out a blanket and spread it out on the ground. We’d lie there, gazing up at the stars, and talk about life.”
“About life?”
“She’d ask me how things were going. If I had any concerns. It was our special time. I could talk to her about anything.” He picked up another piece of bark and sent it flying into the pond. “Except my father. I kept hoping she’d tell me something about him; I don’t remember very much. But she never even mentioned his name. Ever. Not just up on the mountain. My whole life. And I was too afraid to ask her.”
Yrial reached over and touched his knee. “I’m sorry, Eloa.”
He shrugged. “It’s life.” He studied the sky for a moment. “You know, it was really amazing out there. Just by going to the other side of the mountain, the sky was beautiful. The stars were so clear. Not like here, where even the brightest ones have to struggle to be seen above the lights and the haze of the city. You could see everything.”
“I bet that was nice.”
“It was. When we saw shooting stars, my mother told me that I had to make a wish. She said I couldn’t tell her what it was or it wouldn’t come true. I always wished for the same thing. And I never told a soul. But it still didn’t come true. Funny, isn’t it? The things we believe as children?”
“What did you wish for?”
“That my father would have loved me enough, that he wouldn’t have left.”
He looked up at that moment, just in time to see a streak of light flashing dimly across the sky.
“Come on,” he said to Yrial. He stood up. “I’m getting cold.”