The Lantern

When the power went out for the third night in a row, my father brought the old lantern down from the shelf. It was made of pierced tin, and when he lit it, the walls of the room bloomed with a hundred small stars.

He set it in the middle of the table. My mother brought bread. My sister brought her homework. The neighbours' dog began to bark at the darkness, and then, deciding the darkness was not worth barking at, gave up.

We did not turn on our phones. We did not complain about the power. We ate slowly and we talked about small things, and my father told a story about his own father, who had walked, one long night in his youth, across an entire province with only a lantern like this one for company.