Henry Wang Hengle, Grade 8, BASIS International School Shenzhen

As I walked slowly though the forest, the true horrors of nature were unleashed to me. I was indeed a small twig in a hostile forest ready to be crushed by nature.

Suddenly there was a deafening crack as the lightning hit down, and I crawled my way along to a relatively empty space rid of old and ancient trees. Suddenly, there came an ear-splitting, heart-breaking howl, and as I looked around to investigate the noise, I looked with horror at the blood-soaked figure of Sawyer the dog, his body ripped apart. Tears filled my eyes as I looked upon the pitiful scene, and I ran back and embraced him in my cold and numb arms, my sole companion for the past month, but no life beat in his veins.

The dog was dead. I stood frozen in the now waist-high flow of snow and rain, struck with horror.

The dog was dead, and there was no way to recall the life from the dead, I knew, but I still embraced him in my arms without comprehension. The dog who had accompanied me for the past month was dead. A flood of memories entered my head, of Sawyer the dog chasing after dandelions in the fields, of him comfortably sitting on my side by the fireplace in the school, of him helping to procure food for me from the trees... I was ashamed. I hadn’t thanked him and I hadn’t expressed gratitude fully enough.

The feebleness of life overcame my thoughts and emotions. Did that mean that my mission to find hope, to give hope to the world is deemed to failure? No! A strong voice emerged in me as I stood up, straight, and looked at the extravaganza in the now-night sky!

Hope, the thing which I had sought for the past month, had not vanished. It had not perished in the howling winds. It still lived on in me, in my soul, even after I’m dead and buried in the ground for 10 centuries. Yes! Hope lived on in me, and hope lived on in me because I had experienced all these miseries and pains and humiliations. Hope lived on in me because of the hardships that I had undertaken. I had finally understood the mystery of hope: The skies were not gray, the grasses were not gray and it was just I thinking them as gray.

I was rid of hope and the gray color was simply my imagination. I was once set the responsibility of finding hope for our world. Now I understood, it was actually I who hadn’t found hope in this world. And as I savored this thought in my head, I was blessed with the love from all those who had cared for me: my grandmother, Miss Alice, and Miss Jennings, all these people who cared for me and how I was, and most importantly, the Old Man, who set me out on this journey to find hope in the beginning. He was correct: Hope is the courage to go on. Despite all my difficulties, despite all my hardships, I moved on to the better tomorrow of hope. I went forward, a great smile crossing my face.