Creative Prompt #150

*Create a story around this mixed proverb: "Silence is a great healer."*
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His legs tired, his breathing heavy, he looked around at where he was. The valley far below him was filled with farms and small towns. The mountain he stood on towered over the world. Everything was silent.

He sat on a rock looking out over where he had just hiked. This high up there weren't many birds. Up here, the world seemed to sleep below his high perch. On this mountain, he began thinking of the past few months.

Life in the small town nestled in the valley below became suffocating after his best friend died in a car wreck. His best friend that he was going to propose to. She had only moved to town the year before. A city girl surrounded by farms. She was interesting, fun, and they clicked within months.

Sitting on the mountain, in the silence, all he could hear was her laughing at the accent that he didn't realize he had. All he could see was her the wonder in her eyes when he took her to the waterfall south of town. It was beautiful. The only thing he could feel, was her leaning against him when they sat on that very rock only a few days before the accident. He was going to bring her back to that rock on that mountain to propose to her.

Now, three months later, he went back to the rock the first time since he had brought her here. The silence was so much quieter, and much emptier, without her sitting next to him.

He realized, sitting there without her, that he needed to say goodbye. Goodbye to the pain of her loss; goodbye to the mountains and valley where he saw her face and heard her laugh everywhere.

This would be the last time he sat on that rock, for a long time at least. Maybe, with time, he would find his way back to that valley. After he found another girl and had a family, maybe he would bring them here. It would never be the same, but in the silence, he could here her saying that there were adventures out there that he needed.

He stood up from his perch, as a tear silently rolled down his cheek, and he left that place; the silent top of a mountain looking down on his home town. The tear hit the ground in front of him, instantly soaked into the dust, and a final goodbye to the silence of that viewpoint. He hiked back down the mountain and didn't look back.