The Ballet Of Shadows (Poems And Short Stories Collection)

The Indigo Sun

     Blue skies, what an unnatural color for the black nights that have always been, or at least has been until recently. We all stood outside of our quaint homes all staring at the same object. The large blue sphere that was descending upon us. It lowered at such a slow rate that it almost looked like it wasn't moving but it most definitely was. Every minute it looked about double the size of before. A little over an hour later and the night was gone, it loomed right above the tallest tower. The luminescent orb lit up the city like midday and sat silent and still.

     The hours must have past quickly because I could start to see the real sun glimpse over the horizon. The artificial sun finally broke the silence when a large blue beam shot to the earth and slammed into the ground with incredible force. Towers crumbled as the ground shook like a massive earthquake. A moment later the ground was just a gentle vibration, every few minutes the beam would undulate and make the vibrations a little more noticeable, but it was never that bad. It wasn't until I discovered what the undulation meant that I would realize the gravity of it. When neighbors slowly went missing is when everyone knew something was wrong. Then it happened, the first public occurrence. The orb made a mistake and let itself be seen.

     I was having lunch with the other girls from work when the beam undulated once more and the ground shook but this time with more vigor. We looked out of the window to see a lady stop in her tracks and scream. We all looked to the direction she was screaming to see a light blue stream, almost unseen to the eye, and maybe shouldn't have been seen at all, squirm and crawl through the air with grace towards the screaming victim. If not for the tint of her sunglasses and the tint of the windows in the diner, none of us may have seen it. The lady turned the other way and began to sprint when the stream pierced her ankle and squirmed inside of her. Her screaming crackled like radio static and she then grew silent and stopped running. She gazed our way and we could see a blue glow in her eye that quickly faded. She cracked her neck, smiled, and began to walk towards the orb.

     "Did you see that, Bea?"

     "Yeah, I did, what was that?" I responded through a shaken voice.

     None of us believed what we saw but our curiosity got the better of us so we decided to follow the lady. We sprinted out of the diner and finally found her. She was walking with a snob-like arrogance towards the orb and into the quarantine zone set up by the city. Nobody knew what this orb thing was so the national guard decided to shut the area down to be safe. My friends and I were overly curious so we continued to follow her, we stuck to the shadows careful not to be seen.

     "Does the air feel... funny to you, Kaira?" I felt as if the air around me was poking at my skin, like it was trying to find a way in but was too weak to pierce through.

     "Yeah, it feels so weird, do you think it's that thing?" Kaira looked really uncomfortable out here. She's quite the classy lady and was always wearing the most expensive, and the most trendy, of dresses and was sporting a beautiful white sun hat that day and big, darkly tinted sunglasses. She was used to being indoors, with a martini in hand and a butler waiting on her hand and foot. Not cowering in the shadows, stalking a stranger.

     There it was, only a few hundred feet away. The beam coming from the colossal blue structure made an otherworldly buzz as it continued to drill into the ground but what caught us by surprise the most is what was around the base of the beam. The lady that we had been following finally came to a stop near the beam, got down on her knees and stretched her arms towards the orb. When she did this, the fake sun seemed to respond. Almost immediately, little blue ribbons spawned from the beam and slowly enveloped her, piercing every pore one-by-one until her skin glowed as bright and blue as the indigo sun itself. We all shielded our eyes from the brilliant light coming from the lady which slowly faded away. She was frozen in the same outstretched position, reaching for the star, with skin made of stone. Surrounding the beam's base were hundreds more just like this. Reached to the sky in the same fashion, shells of humanity bent in eternal worship to the thing in the sky. All in perfect circles, like rings surrounding a bullseye on a target.

     Moments later, the statues surrounding the beam all pulsed with an azure shine and the beam surged. Suddenly we could see something descending to the ground from within. Something that we could have never seen from afar. A lady of spectral blue that lacked any discernible features except her long spacey blue hair that flowed like the wind. She walked, or floated, gentle as a summer breeze through the lines of frozen people. She lightly caressed their shoulders as she walked by, like a mother to a child. Whenever she would caress one of the statues she seemed to pull some of the blue streams from their body, or put some in, It was hard to tell.

      The azure lady then made her way back to the center of the beam, looked around at all of her worshippers, then raised her hands into the air like she was welcoming the worship coming from them. From each and every statue then flooded a bout of the blue streams, all flooding in to her. She glowed brighter than the indigo sun itself, the sun then began to make a pulsing sound as if gathering an immense amount of energy. The azure lady then reached both hands to the orb in a grace befitting her stature and the beam pulsed rapidly, the orb grew extremely bright, then screeched a loud moan before it emitted a violent indigo wave in every direction. The force of the wave threw the girls and I against the building we were standing in front of, all grew dark for me then.

     I don't know how long it was that I was out but I awoke to the sound of gunfire and jets. I looked up through a daze to see all of the statues now standing with their hands outstretched to the bright blue sphere above the city with intense blue streams coming from their fingers and all reaching and piercing into the orb creating the vision of a web underneath it. I looked to my friends who were standing in the same position as the statues, hands outstretched, blue streams and all, but not solid as stone. Kaira was standing just feet away from me, smiling up at the orb.

     "K-Kaira?"

     Kaira then slowly turned her sights to me, one eye of her sunglasses was shattered and through the broken tinted glass I could see one of her eyes. A glowing blue flame emanated from it and her eye lacked any definition, it was simply a deep blue glow. She smiled and reached one hand down to me, much in the same grace of the azure lady from before. I scurried to my feet and backed away from her whom was still in the exact position as before, hand outstretched to my past self lying on the ground. I looked up to the artificial sun, now glowing brilliantly, as missiles and small bullets slammed into it's surface with no effect. The beam then pulsed violently and the same spectral lady dropped to the ground and gently landed with patience and elegance amidst the chaos. The beam then retracted quickly into the sphere and the blue sun grew black as the darkest abyss.

     The azure lady then gazed in my direction, at least I think she did. Like I said before, she didn't have a face that I could see. Within a batting of my eyes, she was standing within arms reach of me, she held out one hand and from it came a netting of the blue strings that then cocooned me. I felt an odd sense of comfort and silence within the cocoon and in the presence of such beauty that is the azure lady. My skin began to glow like the indigo sun and my heart yearned for her. I could hear a chaotic sonic boom, louder than anything I have heard my entire life outside of the blue wrapping and then silence. When the cocoon finally faded away, the sun was bright blue once more but the air had a new quality to it. The world was in utter silence, not a sound to be heard and even though I was in the center of the city, there wasn't a building to be seen in all directions. The world was a beautiful plane of cyan colored grass, gently blowing in the breeze and the air refracted and rippled with a comfortable energy.

     Under the luminescent blue orb stood the azure lady surrounded by thousands of people with glowing blue skin, all reached out to her. She then pointed to me and beckoned me in. I looked up to the orb and breathed in the wonderfully fresh air. The world had ways of correcting itself, the pollution and violence throughout history became too much and now it is all gone, replaced by this beautiful new world. I smiled and joined the worship to the indigo sun and the beautiful spectral blue lady.