The Nocturne Society

Atlas

The rain would not stop.

Two weeks and the sky remained the same hue, a winter camouflage, of sullage, and of inscrutable complexity. The color grey is no ones color, except perhaps mine.

My mother always called me plain. She saw this as a flaw to be corrected. She wanted the whole world dressed in dazzling color—even me. I never quite complied. When left to my devices, I choose to be unobtrusive. I choose gray. It suits my quiet, contemplative air, and my fair complexion. It is the color, rather than the sound, of silence. It sits with monkish, folded hands and asks for nothing. It never shouts. It never pushes.

In fact, a grey sky is much more riveting to paint than a blue one. It isn't flat. It's deep, endlessly deep. Gray is the dark end of the light. The light end of the dark. Unsettling, perhaps, but full of possibility.

The human eye perceives five hundred shades of grey, so that is how I found myself sitting next to the open window of the quaint inn room they had given me, painting vigorously before the last rays of sun streak away like an ocean tide or a candle being snuffed out. Insistent on capturing every shade and stroke on the ashen smoke of a sky above me, because the instant is fleeting and all the secrets of light and space and reflection seemed to be caught within those folds of cloud and beyond. I wanted to discover them before they slipped out of my grasp.

That night was a storm and rest could not come over me. I couldn't tell if it was the occasional ferocious snap and crack that echoed through the room. Or if it was it the high pitched howling of the wind that was keeping me from sleep. It might also be the anticipation for what the morning light would bring, and the surety that it would end closer to the one place I had come all this way for.

I was to leave from Kings Cross at 8. The problem was, I did not know where that private train would lead me.

I knew that I was to go to a school. A school called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but I had researched the name thoroughly and found nothing, nothing at all. Maybe it was only fiction.

However, the letter was real. I had gotten it merely a month ago, with cursive handwriting stating that they are pleased to inform me that I will be attending in the fall. That they were sorry they had not informed me of my blood status at the proper age, and that I am hereby a wizard.

I knew that it was only a theme, it wasn't actually a school for magic. It was just a normal school hoping to get more scholars if it had an aesthetic. An escapists school, or a dreamers. 

 In a strange dreamlike reality, I found myself ignoring the packing list they gave me and leaving my small home and single mother in Port Isaac for France. I did not like it, but my other option was to stay in my hometown public school. With the same endless rain, the same corner store. The same unimaginative classmates.

The same, the same, the same. I wanted different.

I was 16 and the same was starting to become unbearably subdued. I was 16 and the earth seemed to be turning faster.

I was starting to fear that I would live and die within the gates surrounding the town, maintained and tidy. Polite and narrow minded. When all I desperately wanted to do was run. A bag of nesscesities in my hand. I often dreamed of it. I could go east to London, or to Paris or Greece, or even to America.

Anywhere but here.