France, 2007
Azra sends Arlo to spend time with his Grandmother, she is left alone in the dark, wrapped around a thick blanket, warm enough to make her sweat, yet not enough to stop the chilling throb inside her heart. It has felt like months since she has slept, her eyes burning with every blink as she stares into a pit of darkness under the blanket. Her eyelids slowly shut.
Her mind falls into a fantasy. In it, Eden, Arlo and Azra sit on a river bank, legs dangling above glistening water. This is the exact same sight she saw in her sleep nine months before Arlo's birth. Her eyes drift along the landscape, Eden's firm touch on her hand. Each of their feet droop on the icy liquid. The sky would be a blank canvas if it weren't for all the stars.
The three of them stare at the heavens above them. Along the horizon, mountains tops sit motionless. With each soul freezing breath, Azra's heart beats faster. The sky begins to flicker with violet and green: the sight Arlo had been obsessing over since birth. Azra knows where she is, and yet she still has the urge to ask, where are we? Her mouth spews no words. She's mute. Her jaw clenches tightly, as though a padlock has clamped both rows of teeth shut. She tries to speak again, screams in her mind, Eden, where are we!? Dead silence. Her lover and son don't bother to look her in the eye. Her jaw begins to tighten even more. Azra wonders if her skull could burst.
Her two favourite men sit as still as statues, heads observing the colours in the sky, eyes twinkling like pebbles of gold beneath dirt. Their contemplation makes them oblivious to the pain in Azra's jaw, in Azra's soul. She stops trying to speak. Looks up into the air again. And, as the lights begin to shine even brighter, somehow, Azra's jaw clamps even tighter. Have her teeth dissolved under the pressure yet? She tries to scream, nothing but the muted cries in her throat seem to be carried in the air.
As she begs them for help, she blinks for a split second. As her eyes open again, Arlo and Eden vanish into the thin frozen air. Eden! Arlo! She checks over both shoulders, nothing but grass and darkness. Then, one by one, the stars begin fade away. Like lights in a giant stadium shutting off from left to right. The lime and purple waves that floated no longer existed. The aurora had died. Each corner of the sky became a void. Darkness. Darkness. Darkness. The sky was now nothing. The floor beneath her had faded too. She cannot scream. Her body begins its surrender to gravity. She falls down into a pit of emptiness. A pit of infinity.
Azra wakes in a cold sweat. Her jaw aches with excruciating pain as her head cocks around in search for Eden, in search for something that glows. Her eyes are met with nothing but four walls and a ceiling in a darkened room. I miss you.
YOU ARE READING
The Northern Lights
AdventureTwo adventurers and a mountain cross paths. Their souls are connected to the lights that flicker unpredictably. Every spirit has a purpose. Every journey has an end. But with every end there is a beginning. The Northern Lights dance, for they are no...
