Captar1
In a small riverside town where the evenings smelled of wet soil and jasmine, lived a quiet boy named Arin. He had a strange hobby. While other children collected stamps or marbles, Arin collected sunsets.
Every day after school, he would climb the old water tower with a small glass jar in his backpack. As the sky turned orange and purple, he would open the jar and whisper, "Stay." Then he would close it gently, as if sealing something fragile inside.
No one believed him, of course.
But Arin's room told a different story. Shelves covered the walls, and on each shelf sat jars glowing faintly with colors—golden, crimson, violet, rose. At night, his room looked like a museum of evenings.
He started collecting sunsets the year his mother stopped walking.
An illness had slowly taken the strength from her legs. She spent most of her days near the window, watching the sky change colors while pretending she wasn't sad. Arin noticed how her eyes softened whenever the sunset painted the walls.
So he decided to bring the sunsets to her.
Each night, he would open one jar in her room. Warm light would spill out, filling the air with the colors of that evening. For a few minutes, the room felt alive again. His mother would smile as if she could almost feel the breeze of the river and hear the distant birds.
"You always bring the most beautiful sunsets," she would say.
Arin never told her the truth: some sunsets were ordinary. But in the jar, they became extraordinary.
Captar 2
One day, the sky did not change.
Clouds covered the town from morning to night. The next day, the same. Then the next. The sun rose and set behind a gray curtain. People forgot what colors looked like. The town felt tired and colorless.
Arin's jars became important.
Neighbors visited just to see a little light. Children gathered in his room to watch sunsets from weeks ago. The mayor even asked if Arin could "lend" a few jars to the town hall.
Captar 3
For the first time, people believed him.
But as the days passed, Arin noticed something worrying. Each time he opened a jar, the glow was dimmer than before. The colors faded faster. It was as if the sunsets were being used up.
He counted his jars.
Only seven left.
That night, he sat beside his mother and opened the brightest one he had saved. The room filled with deep orange light, so rich it looked like melted gold.
His mother watched quietly.
"Arin," she said softly, "why don't you keep one for yourself?"
He shook his head. "I don't need it. I see the sky every day."
She smiled in a way that made him uncomfortable. "You don't always need to keep things in jars to remember them."
The next morning, Arin climbed the water tower again, even though the sky was still gray. He opened his last empty jar and waited.
Nothing happened.
He felt foolish. Angry. Sad.
"Please," he whispered to the sky. "Just one more."
Captar 4
A drop of rain fell into the jar.
Then another.
Soon, rain poured down. Arin almost cried. He had come for color, not water.
But when he looked closely, the raindrops inside the jar shimmered faintly. They reflected tiny bits of light from somewhere above the clouds.
He took the jar home.
That night, he opened it in his mother's room. Instead of a sunset, soft silver light spread across the walls, like moonlight dancing on water.
His mother laughed—a sound he hadn't heard in months.
"It's beautiful," she said. "This one feels different."
Arin realized something important. Maybe he hadn't been collecting sunsets at all. Maybe he had been collecting moments of light—whatever form they came in.
The next day, the clouds finally broke.
A sunset burst across the sky so bright that people came out of their houses just to stare. Orange melted into pink, pink into purple. The town gasped as if seeing color for the first time.
Captar 5
Arin did not take a jar.
He stood beside his mother's window and watched the sky with her.
And for the first time, he understood that some sunsets are not meant to be kept.
They are meant to be shared.