The night wind rustled through the trees, carrying the sound of a distant stream. The campfire gradually died down, revealing a dark red ember at its center, like a beating heart. Someone started humming an off-key tune, and the others joined in. The off-key melody drifted through the valley, yet somehow it sounded remarkably harmonious.
Ah Yu gazed at the starry sky and suddenly remembered the furrowed brows of everyone before they set off. Back then, they were like butterflies entangled in a spider web, struggling but unable to break free. But now, the firelight reflected on everyone's relaxed brows, and those words hidden in their hearts, those edges smoothed by life, all came back to life around this small campfire.
“Look,” Ah Yu suddenly pointed to the sky, “doesn’t that brightest star look like the streetlights we saw when we first arrived in town?”
"It looks more like the lantern that hangs at Grandpa Wang's house at the village entrance!" A-Jie retorted with a laugh.
“No, it’s not,” Xiaowen said, tilting her head back with a hopeful tone, “it’s like hope.”
This word floated lightly in the night sky, yet like a pebble thrown into a lake, it rippled through everyone's heart. Yes, hope. Not an unattainable fantasy, but a glimmer of light hidden in the mundane details of daily life, a flame suppressed by reality yet never extinguished. When they lay bare their wounds under the starry sky, when those long-suppressed troubles evaporated in the firelight, what remained was the courage to embrace life anew.
The charcoal gave a final, soft crackling sound as it crumbled into fine ash. The group wrapped themselves tightly in their felt blankets, their breaths condensing into white mist in the cold air, only to dissipate quickly into warm smiles. The distant mountains and forests stood silent under the starlight, as if witnessing a nighttime conversation about redemption and rebirth. And this conversation, like a seed, would quietly sprout and grow after everyone returned to the city, awaiting the next season of blossoming.
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