ORI’S STORY
The Keeper of Light
Everything in the city shone.
The faces of buildings, the edges of bridges, even the narrow strips set into the pavements. At night it was so bright that the children knew the stars only from pictures.
One morning, a strange figure appeared in the square.
Its slender body reached towards the sky; its shoulders resembled two upturned wings. It had no eyes. Between its blue hands it held a golden crystal, and through the oval opening in its body you could see the city beyond.
Nobody had seen who brought it there.
People took photographs and moved on. They thought it was another decoration among the skyscrapers.
But one little girl stopped.
Her family had moved to the city that day. In her coat pocket, she held a small pebble from the garden of their old home. She watched the crystal in the figure’s hands for a long time, then took out her stone.
“Did you bring something from home too?” she asked.
Light began to stir inside the crystal.
The girl stepped closer. For a moment, deep in the gold, she recognised the tree in their garden. The crooked branch where they had tied a swing. Afternoon sunlight falling through the leaves.
“I miss it,” she whispered.
The sculpture’s light brushed gently across her fingers. The pebble grew warm in her palm.
She came back the next day. On the third day, she brought her mother.
In time, other people stopped too. Some spoke a name. Others stood quietly for a few minutes. The crystal shone a little differently for each of them.
The little girl named the figure ORI.
And when someone later asked why there was an empty space in the sculpture’s body, she looked through it at the busy square.
“So there’s room for us too.”
Written by Kamilla Akhmin
