The Night the Lights Went Out

A cosy story about adapting when things go wrong, with safety first.

The storm began after dinner. Wind rattled the windows, and rain drummed on the roof. Maya and her brother Jai were doing their homework at the kitchen table when, with a little click, all the lights went out.

“Oh!” said Jai. “It is so dark!” For a moment, nobody moved. Then their father’s voice came from the hallway. “Do not worry,” he said. “It is only a power cut. I will find the torch.”

He came back with a big torch, and their mother brought a battery lantern from the cupboard. It cast a warm yellow glow across the room. “We will stay in the kitchen,” said their mother, “where we can see everything.”

Maya noticed that the dark looked different now. The shadows were long and soft, and the rain sounded cosier. “What do we do?” she asked. Her father smiled. “We play a game, I think.”

He found a pack of cards and a board game in the cupboard. They sat around the table, with the lantern in the middle. They played snap, and then a game about animals. Jai kept making funny noises for the animal cards.

Their mother heated some soup on the gas stove, and poured it into the thermos so it stayed warm. They had it with crusty bread, dipping and slurping. It tasted better than usual, perhaps because of the lantern.

After supper, their father told them stories from when he was a boy, during the great storm in his village, when the lights were out for two days. “We had no television, no phone, only each other,” he said.

At nine o’clock, the lights came back on with a hum. Jai blinked, and Maya sighed. “It was nice, though,” she said. “Can we do it again?” Her mother laughed. “Maybe not the storm, but we can have a lantern night whenever you like.”

The next Friday, they switched off the lights after dinner, and had a lantern evening. It became a family tradition, and Maya always chose the soup.

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