Member-only story
The Leave-Behind Brother
The Exposition
A young boy wound his way through the crowd to a small open-air courtyard tucked away in a bustling neighborhood in Wuhan, China.
The sun cast a warm halo over the streets as it began to set. Without his two brothers alongside him, the young boy found a spot in front of a humble stage while families scattered around him.
The centerpiece of the stage was a white sheet stretched taut like a canvas ready to come alive. When the early evening grew appropriately dim, the chime of a gong sounded. The buzz of the crowd subsided as an oil lamp flickered and bathed the stage with light.
With graceful finesse, the skillful hand of a puppeteer summoned various characters to life, their silhouettes appearing behind the white screen. The little boy watched as fantastical stories of legendary heroes and mythical creatures were woven before him.
At the end of the Chinese puppet show, the boy got up and made his way back through the winding streets to his grandparents home. This after-school entertainment filled the void left by the absence of his two brothers who were, until then, his reliable companions.
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