Every autumn in a small village in China, families carried lanterns into the forest.
Each lantern represented a person they had lost.
Children asked why.
Their parents explained:
“Because love should not disappear when someone does.”
At night, hundreds of lanterns glowed between the trees.
The forest looked like a sky filled with stars.
One young girl released her lantern into the river.
It floated away slowly.
She whispered her grandmother’s name.
The tradition continued for generations.
The villagers never forgot the people represented by those lights.
