The Tears of Aurora

The Skaljnes Sisters

Aurora woke up feeling like she weighed a ton. She muttered, "Berg... Manchesto." Images from her nightmare were breaking up as she regained consciousness. Her perspiration had dampened her bed and the sheets stuck to her skin. She would have preferred to stay under her comforter, but it didn't feel good, so she tossed it back in one determined sweep, and got up. Still undressed, she opened the door to her room without a sound, slipped into the bathroom, and placed her right foot into the sink to clean it. That was one of her little obsessions: washing her right foot in the morning, the left in the evening. The cool water on her skin felt good. Her task accomplished, she returned to her room and saw the time on her alarm clock. She gasped with surprise. She couldn't imagine having slept so long! She quickly slipped on her blue dress, got her shoes from under the bed, grabbed her pouch and attached it to her waist with a belt.

The house was silent. There was a peaceful atmosphere. "Ten o'clock... Apparently everyone is already up." Aurora did not usually stay late in bed. "At least I know one who will have waited for me." A pretty light was shining on the parquet floor of the living room. Books were piled up in the bookcases. Musical instruments were hanging on the walls, beneath colorful paintings. Aurora raced to the kitchen and opened the fridge in one smooth movement.

"Good morning, Igor!" she said happily. "Come on! Get up, lazy bones! It's going to be a beautiful day!"

She was talking loudly but sweetly, her hands floating in the air, rhyming her words.

"Lazy bones, frrt? I've been waiting for you for more than three hours! You forgot all about me, is that it? And then you come in here showing off in front of me, frrt."

Igor Septimus was a ball of moss, a sort of filamentous alga. He was big, spherical, hairy, and loved the cold. Aurora considered him her best friend, and it was rare to see her without him. Being very talkative, he was blessed with a kind of clair-knowing, a deep understanding of all sorts of things that he could not help but share. Generally speaking, he never restrained himself from giving his point of view. The only way to keep him from doing so was to talk faster than him. Aurora loved his accent. When she listened to him, she heard nature, the sound of the wind in the leaves. "Frrt!"

Aurora took him out of the fridge and carried him in front of her eyes.

"But of course I have not forgotten you! How could I ever do that? I had some trouble getting up, that's all. Well, getting out of my dream... out of my nightmare. Brrr, it was so real! I felt totally useless. Trolual was there. And then, an old woman inside a statue. And then some boulders that were crashing down on the city of Berg. Actually on a citadel, but I believe it was Berg. I only learned it later. After Noémie destroyed the wall."

"Aurora, frrt?"

"Huh?"

"You're telling it all topsy turvy, frrt. I don't understand anything about your dream."

"You're not trying. Let me think about it a little. It all seemed so real, but the more I try to remember, the more the details disappear."

"In the meantime, I'll tell you mine, my dream, frrt."

"Hmmm... no thanks!"