Dreaming of the midnight sun

Prologue

The street lights glowed yellow as the storm raged overhead, thick scars of lightning cracking the horizon, leaving California a soppy pulp in awe of what nature was serving up. Thunder rattled the palm trees like children's toys, their slender trunks bending to kiss the ground. No one was out that night. No one but you.

I remember the way the rain leeched through my clothes when the storm first began, the way mother pulled me into the darkened alley and started to scream. Blood curdling echoes like nothing I had ever heard. She was shaking and crying and I sat there. I was ten. What did I know? When she slumped against the wall. Her legs still spread wide, I thought she had fallen asleep and curled up next to her. Until, that is, she went cold. And stiff. And I couldn't feel her heart beat. And I noticed the sticky wetness on the ground around us.

You found me, my tiny body, shivering ice cold, pressed up against my mother's dead side. Tears falling, my only heat, red streaks searing my skin. Revealing the hatrid and fear. The pure reality of how I couldn't bear to live without her. You saved me.