Dreams Never Die

---EllaeenahJadeFire

They said the skies didn’t belong to boys like him.

Elijah was twelve the first time he saw a plane slice through the sky like a silver arrow. It was 1943, and the world was at war, but in the quiet fields of Georgia, all that mattered to him in that moment was the rumble in the heavens and the strange pang it stirred in his chest.

He was barefoot, standing in a row of cotton, when it passed overhead. Everyone else ducked their heads, but Elijah looked up, squinting into the sunlight like it was calling him. And maybe it was.

That night, lying on a thin mattress beside his brothers, he whispered to no one in particular, “I’m gonna fly one day.”

He didn’t say it loud. Not because he was afraid, but because he knew how folks laughed at boys who dreamed too big. Especially boys with a dark skin like his, and dirt under their nails. Boys who worked in the fields owned by others, boys who worked to make the futures of others rich and bright.

His daddy was a tough man, a quiet man, had laughed once, just once, when Elijah mentioned flying.

“Boy,” he said, not unkindly, “we don’t fly. We survive.”

But Elijah kept dreaming.

He built wings out of wood scraps. Drew cockpit panels on old grain sacks. Studied birds the way other boys studied baseball. While others dreamed of escape, Elijah dreamed of soaring.

And then came the war. His older brother went off and never came back. The cotton dried up. Elijah quit school to work beside his father, and the weight of the world seemed to extinguish his dream like a sheet over a flame.

Years passed. His hands became calloused. He married. Raised children. Worked wherever he could. He didn’t talk about flying anymore. But every time a plane passed overhead, he stopped and looked up - and smiled, just a little. Because the dream, though buried, had never died.

And fate worked its hand, as it often does, and one day Elijah got a job sweeping floors at a local airfield. Not flying - but close enough for him. Each morning, before anyone else arrived, he’d walk between the planes, tracing their curves, brushing his fingers over the wings like a man praying.

One day, a young pilot named Charlie saw him. He stood silently watching Elijah. Charlie loved planes, and he could feel this love in the man who stood a few feet away. Black skinned, weatherbeaten, not quite clean, clothes that had seen better days. He walked up to him, and placed an arm around those old but strong shoulders.

“You ever been up?” he asked.

Elijah chuckled. “No, sir. But I’ve dreamed it most of my life.”

Charlie paused, and his grandmother’s voice rang in his rang in his ears. ‘Charlie, my boy, if you can keep your dream alive, and help another to keep their dream alive, you shall die a very happy man.’ Squeezing Elijah’s shoulders, he said, said, “C’mon. Let’s change that.”

And just like that, Elijah was in the sky.

It was only a short ride, fifteen minutes in a tiny Cessna, but it was as though he had been blessed by an unseen hand.

Tears rolled down his cheeks as the ground went further away and bushes disappeared. The clouds embraced him. He imagined that they were happy to meet him, their old friend.

When they landed, Charlie slapped his back and said, “Now wasn’t that something else?”

Elijah just nodded, his heart too full to speak. He knew he wouldn’t be taking lessons, how could he on a janitor’s wages, with three kids to feed and educate? But it was enough. Enough to remind him that dreams don’t die. They just wait.

So he kept going. Working honestly. Providing. Loving his children. And one day as an old man, he told his granddaughter Maya a story. At first she was too young to know that this was his story, but soon she realised because each time he told her the story, she could see how his feeble voice seemed to find a renewed strength.

“You really wanted to fly, Granddaddy?” she asked.

“I still do,” he said softly.

And Maya looked up at the clouds with her big brown eyes, and whispered, “Then maybe I’ll fly for you.”

From that moment on, Maya had a dream.

She drew planes on everything—napkins, homework, the margins of her school books. She wore a plastic pilot’s badge to school. When kids teased her, and told her girls don’t fly—much less girls who were poor and had dark skin—she’d lift her head and say, “My granddaddy says the dream never dies. It just waits for someone to carry it.”

Maya studied hard. And she saved every penny. Applied for scholarships.

And when she turned eighteen, Elijah handed her a small wooden box. Inside was something made of metal which she couldn’t recognise at first. Gently she took it out, and her eyes widened in disbelief  - cockpit with all the dials and wings made from junkyard metal She looked up at her grandfather.

“I made this when I was about your age,” he said. “Didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I had to try.”

She held it like a sacred thing. Because it was.

By the time Maya was in her twenties, she’d earned her pilot’s license. The first Black woman to do so in her town. The first in her family. She wore her uniform like a sacred vestment.

At her graduation, she looked out at the crowd—cadets, parents, teachers—and found Elijah sitting near the front, eyes full of tears.

When she stood up to give her speech as head of her class, she said, “This dream didn’t start with me. It started with a boy who looked at the sky and believed he belonged there—even when the world said he didn’t. He never flew solo. But he gave me the wings.”

The crowd stood applauding loudly. Elijah did, too, trembling with age and pride.

For the next ten years, Maya flew. And then she began teaching kids to fly. Especially the ones who were told that they couldn’t. Especially the ones who never believed their dream would come true.

And then, one spring morning, Elijah’s time came to fly. This time into the light. Ninety-eight years old, lying in a quiet room surrounded by family.

Maya held his hand.

“Granddaddy,” she whispered, “do you still wish you could’ve flown?”

He smiled weakly, and said, “I did fly, baby girl. I did fly, every time you did.”

She buried her face in his chest, and cried. Her heart was breaking.

After his funeral, Maya returned to the swing where she and Elijah would sit. The skies above were just as wide, just as blue.

She closed her eyes, and for a moment, she could feel his hand in hers. His heart beating in her chest. She closed her eyes to keep the memories safe. And to keep the tears from falling. And then she felt a soft touch. She looked down and saw her niece, a tiny little thing all of three years.

“Are you really a pilot?” The child looked at her as though seeing a hero.

Maya grinned.

Picking her up, Maya said, “I am. And one day, maybe you will be too. Just remember—dreams don’t die. They just wait for someone brave enough to carry them.”