When Daniel was a boy, he used to sit on the hill behind his house and stare at the sky, imagining what it would be like to fly. He dreamed of airplanes, of floating above the world with nothing but clouds beneath him. He longed for the rush of takeoff, the hum of engines, the freedom of soaring through the air. That dream carried him through school and training until he became a pilot one day. Every time he lifted off the ground, he felt the same thrill he had as a boy sitting on that hill. It was everything he ever wanted.
On the other side of the world, in a village where the ground was dry and cracked, a little girl named Laila would hear the sound of planes and run to hide. She knew what came after the roaring engines—dust rising, walls shaking, fire raining from the sky. Her mother would hold her close and whisper that it would pass, but the fear never did. The sky wasn’t a place of dreams for her; it was a place where nightmares lived. She never looked up. She never imagined flying. She only imagined silence, a world where the sky was empty and safe.
One night, Daniel landed in a foreign country, stepping out into the cool air and stretching his legs after hours in the cockpit. He watched the stars, breathing in the stillness. Laila, miles away, lay awake in the dark, counting the seconds between each distant rumble, waiting for the moment when the earth would tremble again.
One dream. Two lives. For Daniel, the sky was freedom. For Laila, it was a cage she could never escape.
Dreams are strange like that. What lifts one person up can push another down. And sometimes, without meaning to, without even knowing, our dreams become someone else’s nightmare.
The CJBuzz 