Borrowing Light(11)

Night fell, and the town quieted down a little.

Shen Rihui sat on the small balcony of Margaret's house and watched the last of the evening sun in the sky.

She spread out her sketchbook and drew the colors of the sky as the scarlet faded to greenish gray.

In her ears were the sounds of Zoe and Simon laughing and joking in the kitchen, and Mrs. Margaret's soft humming of an old song.

In a small corner of the world, someone is tenderly alive.

Wasn't this the gentleness she had been looking for, Shen Rihui thought?

When the brush fell, she quietly wrote in the corner of a page of her sketchbook: "To borrow the light, to become the light." (Borrow the light, become the light.)

Shen Riquelike fished out a letter from an old wooden box at the foot of her bed, which had been slightly yellowed by age.It was a letter she had written to herself.

She was sixteen at the time, busy with her dreams in a big, bustling city, hurrying through the subway every day, wandering the streets under flashing neon lights, with no place in her heart where she could be quiet.

"Dear Sunflower," she read the letter softly, her voice so low she could barely hear herself, "you don't have to be afraid to go.You've never seen the outside world, maybe you'll like it."

At that time, although she lived extremely hard, she always felt uneasy, like she was wandering without roots.She never stopped, always thinking about how she could go further until she, one day, suddenly stopped at a crossroads and realized that she had lost her way.

She remembered the night she stood on the street corner and saw a group of young people laughing and joking around, but a deep sense of loneliness suddenly rose in her heart.She remembered what her mother had once said, "Sunflower, there is more to life than what is in front of you, there are also poems and faraway places."She had always thought that poetry and faraway places were dreams far away from the hustle and bustle, but she never thought that one day she would find her own piece of peace in a place called "small town".

She put the letter paper back into the box and looked up at the window.

Outside the window, there was a blue sky and scattered white clouds, and the quiet streets of the town.

The peace here was like something she had once longed for but could not obtain.Memories were like the sunlight outside the window, shining through the glass on her heart, gradually becoming warm.

It was a summer in her childhood, the big acacia tree outside the window of her house was full of small white flowers, and the fragrance filled the whole yard.

Shen Rihui still remembered that when she was a child, she always liked to sit under the tree, holding a coloring book and drawing quietly.

Her mother always smiled and sat next to her, holding a cup of warm tea in her hand, occasionally stroking her hair: "Sunflower, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

The little one looked up, looked at her mother's smile, and innocently replied, "I want to draw more paintings, and paint all these beautiful things."

Her mother smiled, "That's good, remember to paint clean, the world is already beautiful."

At that time, her world was small, and the only things on her canvas were the acres of fields at home and the perennial acacia tree.That, she thought, was everything.

It wasn't until one day when her parents took her to a painting exhibition downtown and she saw all those colorful paintings that she realized that the world was so rich in color.At that moment, she realized that she wanted to do more than paint the familiar landscape in front of her house; she wanted to paint all the beauty.

Her mother's words echoed in her ears again, "Remember, no matter where you are, the most important thing is that you paint the world as you see it."

At that time, she didn't understand the deep meaning of that sentence, but whenever she picked up a brush, she would always unconsciously think of that big acacia tree and that carefree summer.