The sun was making its descent into the crimson horizon. A pair of deep blue eyes followed the sun as it made its way down. The deep blue eyes wore an expression so morose, so poignant that an onlooker might wonder what was so wrong with is life. The startling blue of his eyes was in stark contrast to the crimson red of the sky. The boy kept looking at the sky, clutching his faded brown bad which was slung over his shoulder. There was a small buckle protruding from the front of the bag and his feeble hands nervously played with it unconsciously.
The fourteen year old Pierre then looked down, away from the almost disappearing sun, towards the fork in the road, still frantically holding onto his bag for support. There was not a soul to be seen and the eerie silence was piercing. Pierre's legs gave in and he fell to the floor, shivering violently as he looked ahead into the darkness. His breathing came out in gasps and his face was covered in sweat. He slowly brought his hands to his face, wiping out the beads of sweat. He looked to his left and then to his right, hoping to find somebody, anybody to appear and help him, calm him down, but there was nobody.
His breathing slowly came back to normal and his legs stopped shivering. Having placed his face between his knees, he tried to think straight. One thing was clear and that was he was alone in the dead of nowhere, with no place to go to and nobody to hold onto for support. His father had left him for a woman a few days ago. He, at the age of fourteen had to fend for himself with nothing but an old bag containing an extremely tattered copy of Bible inside it. It was his mother's. He had left everything behind at his father's but he could not imagine leaving the book behind. The Bible had once been touched by her tender hands. It had the story of his mother etched in its pages. It was his mother's, the most beautiful lady in the world. She was, she still is and will always be the most wonderful and inspiring person in his life. She was not there with him then but he knew with all his heart that she was looking down at him from the heavens.
He opened his bag and took out the Bible in his hands, slowly turning over the pages. He was never a believer and the Bible meant little to him but the pages bore the life story of his mother and he held each and every one of the pages as tenderly as possible, imagining his mother's hands in the place of the pages.
As he sat there with tears in his eyes, he barely noticed the dancing lights cast by the then rising moon. He looked up suddenly to find the place eerily dark. He turned to his left and saw a small lane leading into wilderness. It was dark but looked well maintained and neat. He realized that this road was tread upon often. He then looked to his right and found a smaller lane, covered with wild trees and weeds. Every minute detail of the lane was visible. He looked up into the sky and smiled to himself. He knew exactly which road to take. Rising to his feet, the bible still in his hands, he looked at the road not taken with a glint in his eyes and a small smile on his lips.
After all his mother, the moon was shining down at him at the end of the road, smiling at him and bathing him in the light of her innocence, her knowledge, ready to embrace him and wrap him in her arms when he finally made it across the road- the road not taken.
Aishwarya Kumar.
