The Night

The night , infinitely more beautiful than the day , saw a boy on a walk . The day stared out at him , stark , revealed all in a blinding light and concealed nothing . The night enveloped him .
On that night he set out to see the darkness . He walked into the night and as always felt safe in it`s envelope .
A fight of someone`s right broke out . Apparently causeless , it played out , to end fruitless . The fighters were drawn apart and promised to do unto the other what only monsters were capable of . This was scheduled for the next day , by which time each was convinced the other would be convinced anyway . So saying they went away amidst a hail of profanities .
Further down the road shops began to close for the night . Shopkeepers hung their wares in deep recesses and stacked their containers . They shut down the artificial light . Then their assistants downed the shutters and they were all gone . He wondered what persuaded them to leave their shops in darkness . Unseen dangers did not exist for them , he thought .
Along the path ahead was a lottery shop . People plunged into the game of fortune . The night was dark . So were their minds , dark with the brew of the local brew and the effects of it . So many of them knew their hopes of the day before were shattered but the darkness did not let them look ahead . An emptiness was reflected in their eyes , from the absence of conflict in their actions .
Cars whizzed by . Urged on by their owners they surged to - surged to where ? Home perhaps , where they would sleep .The lights would be put out there . An ambulance passed . It wailed its way through the traffic . In the hospital behind it alerted someone even before it was seen . He remembered the sound from every night . No lights would be put out where that ambulance came from . No lights were put off where it went .
An empty road loomed ahead . Poles bearing directions jutted out . They showed the way to follow in the light cast by the tall lamps near them . The lamps were guides too , put there by men to quell the dark .
At the bottom of a pole he sat down . He looked up and saw the stars . Cold distant lights that were guides as effective as the tall lamps . The lamps were different though , from the ones in his own memory . The stars he always knew as they were . Their sight soothed him . He lapsed into a reverie seeing Orion hunting , Canis aiding him , Great Bear waiting , the Guards protecting Polaris . The reverie passed and he moved further .
A car pulled up ahead of him . A girl got into the back seat . There were two men in the front seat . Another girl sat on a bench on the footpath . As he came closer her sobs reached him . A man came to her , pulled her closer , covered her eyes and placed his hand on her head .
He was close to his home now . He stopped and took a deep breath , stretched out his arms and looked up once . Once at home he changed his clothes put off the lights and went to sleep .