Lightbulbs and Loaves

A boy has an idea; a neighbor just brings the bread. (Photo is not credited to me)

The house was nothing much to look at; it didn’t matter. Every night he’d spend it looking up at the stars wondering when one would blink at him. His family’s farm had withered long ago, he’d spent time thinking and thinking while gazing but never while plowing. You couldn’t see the stars during the day. As twilight set in one evening not too long ago, a knock rocked the wooden door. “Hi, hello?” a light voice said. The boy answered it to something he hadn’t thought of in far too long.

An old neighbor was holding a basket of bread. Three small loaves wrapped in a napkin, “may I come in?” The young woman asked as her dressed swayed in the wind. The boy reeled his hand in like a spinning fishing line. The wooden shack had but three chairs around the table made from an old door they’d found decades ago. The boy pulled out her seat and stepped aside. “Thank you, have you seen the night’s sky?”

“Yes, every night’s in fact. I think about the stars often.” She pulled out a loaf and broke it in two. The boy took one half, chomping into it while stealing a glance of the sky out of the window. He swallowed heavily. “I wonder where they come from.”

“Why people, just like us,” she answered as she tore at her bread and ate each new piece.

“There’s more to it than that; that’s what I think,” he declared as he took a seat.

“Tell me-”

“I think it’s the those special people, the ones who make ideas. The man who crafted a wheel and the other who first built a house- the man who made the first loaf of bread,” the boy took another bite.

“tell me what you think of the bread, I was asking,” the girl giggled at his eyes. They’d sprung to a much larger size.

“Oh...oh, yes it’s amazing. It deserves it's own star,” he grinned before biting off more than he could chew but fought the good fight and swallowed that too.

“Well thank you, no one seems to appreciate the little loaves anymore,” she ran her finger across the flour still on the bottom of her loaf. “I heard an idea is but a lightbulb, it just needs a little power to show you the way,” she tossed the napkin over the inside of the wicker basket.

“Leaving?” She nodded in response.

“I’m turning on too many lights with you,” she let herself out of the shack while the boy looked onward to the sky. They started to a take a shape he’d never seen them as before.

The entire night he looked out the window by their chairs. He could do it surely, why not him? His least favorite star blotted out the others as morning came. The boy walked into his sleeping room and stared at the raggedy blankets on the floor. They were clean but old, couldn’t that be something? He went to the farmland to look upon the few scraggly daisies his family used to sell and he’d struggled to continue. Finally he went back to his table and looked through the sunny window. Yes this’ll do.

The boy worked day in and day out, careful only to stop when she was coming around. He could hear her dress fighting back the wind when she came over the hill and he could smell the fresh grooves in her baking. He’d push his project away deep behind the shack where she’d never look.

The night before he would be finished he set her down just as he’d done every night since she came. “Tomorrow,” he started, “I want you to come earlier, just when the ideas start to light up.”

“But the bread won’t be done then, and you’ll be watering your daisies at twilight.”

“Not tomorrow- I want you to see. The daisies and bread, they’ll be but small loving memories.” She cracked a loaf and handed it to him. He was different to her, glowing like a dying lightbulb, but he certainly was moving and living as much as ever.

“Yes, I’ll try to cook the bread early and I’ll be here just as you ask. Tell me-”

“The grooves make this the tastiest crumbs I will ever eat,” he said. She blushed a bright red and took a bite of bread, straight from the loaf this time.

The morning came and went as the boy finished stitching. He tested it all, the coils and sparks and fabric he’d found. He smirked at his success and fired away, sparking the coils and filling the fabric with the bouncing of warming air to fill it’s folds into an outstretched fabric bowl. He heard her dress swish from the hill, and that warm fresh bready smell. The tabletop he’d taken and folded upright was the best size. As the contraption lifted he worried about, “I can’t keep it down, I can’t keep it down!” He did what he could but his eyes drifted off to the bulbs in the sky, now he was up just a bit to high.

“Where are you going?” He heard from below.

“Would you like to join?”

“Yes, I’ve brought more bread to enjoy. I can’t leap that high you know,” she stated. He was fully aware and tried to devise something to swing down to her glare. She looked around and around finally finding a spark. She twisted the cloth napkin that covered their dinner and tossed it up to the cabin. The boy grabbed it quite quickly and that’s when he saw, the little spark of a light bulb was in her all along.

Together they rose, chomping on each loaf, greeted by many and stared at by most. The boy had found a way after all, a rogue entrepreneur solving it all. The girl hugged him close, “you did it and to think all I baked were six loaves.”

“All?” He asked, “why I’d be lost without those loaves. The grooves showed me talent to carve this nice basket, your napkin showed me how to make this balloon, but most of all there’s you. You taught me to try, you lit my spark- why you told me it all.” The pair floated higher and higher, until they were the star being looked at to spark someone else’s desire.

Author's Note

There are likely a few grammatical errors. Thanks for looking at it!