Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 67

This week's picture is a photo is an unknown. I don't know who took it or where. It appears in a lot of places and goes back a lot of years. But I like it. I thought it could offer some interesting tales.

I had expected my tale to go dark, but I couldn't sustain it, I couldn't do it to my main character. I worry that I am going soft. Either way it's what came from this photo. Hope you like it.

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.  

Sustaining The Light

She always saw the best in everything; she always made the dreary bright. She taught me how to look at things through a different lens. Not a rose-tinted one, she insisted, but one where you can make the best of what you have, if not physically, mentally.

I cherished that about her. I would often ask myself, how would Nadia see this? What would she say were the positives here? It helped me appreciate rather than complain; to find contentment over dissatisfaction.

Some would say it was settling, even giving up, but I saw it as embracing and valuing what you have in that moment.

And I valued her. Every day. Every waking hour. Even in my dreams.

And the day she covered the seat on the station platform in flowers when our train was delayed, was the day I knew: she had to be mine, mine forever.

But could someone so beautiful, so gracious, so accepting, relent to be mine? I didn’t know. And in my unknowing I worried about it. And that worry turned to paranoia.

I saw others reacting to her inner light and enjoy it too. I wasn’t the only one that saw it, and loved it. People were drawn to her. I worried that they would woe her and take her away from me. I worried that I would become invisible to her. That she would tire of me. That I would never be enough to sustain her.

How could I keep her? How could I make sure that no one ever took her away from me? There was only one way. I had to take her away, far, far away, and the opportunity arose when I found a job on a distant island.

It wasn’t a fun job, wasn’t even one I had dreamed of – managing a lighthouse in all weathers wasn’t a job that most people coveted, but it would keep us together and people apart. 

And I sold it to her, using her own thought process: highlighting all the positives, all the wonderful things we would experience and enjoy, even in this remote location. And the added bonus was that it meant we had to be married, tying her to me, making her my family. It was a joyous day, one where I didn’t mind people basking in her light. It would be the last time after all.

And though I smile now looking back on that wonderful day and the idea I had of making her mine, I look out of the window at her gentle face and wonder what I was thinking. Her smile, along with her laughter, is rarely seen now. And though she is still trying hard to keep looking on the bright side of life, the isolation is affecting her: her light is fading.

I have to steel myself for the truth: I will have to share her if I want to see her light shine again. I am not enough to sustain her - as no one person is enough to sustain another. True love means to set another free and risk losing them. What is life without risk after all?