Aurora's Chosen Ivy

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. Every fanned blade of foliage had combusted all on its own and all the orange resplendence that had once been so prominent in the sunset just hours before was reduced to blackened embers and licking flames. The air was thick with smoke that climbed ever higher towards the waxing moon.

It was the final sign. The one I had been waiting for for so long and I could hardly believe my luck. I was going to be the witch that greeted Aurora Incarnate. It was coming straight to my door.

Years ago, I moved to Indigo Valley so that I could be part of the coven that watched and waited for Aurora Incarnate. It was a celestial being that only walked the Earth once every century and only in that valley. I had been obsessed with it since I heard the folktales as a little girl and part of me, deep down, was always afraid that it was nothing more than a bunch of old stories that had been passed down to explain a few lights in the sky.

When the signs started nearly a month ago, I was among the doubters. The days grew colder. The river became so crystal clear that you could see to the very bottom of the deepest point. I think that was what got me. I couldn’t deny it then. How else would those muddy waters soften?

Nightly winds howled and rattled the windows but by morning, not a single leaf had been disturbed on the ancient oak trees that could be spotted throughout our tiny town. Eventually, the surrounding forest and the mountains above were hushed and an unnatural silence closed in around us. The silence was the most maddening. It drove people away, people that had been so dedicated before they couldn’t handle the animal urge to run.

I stuck it out with a handful of other people. We were widespread and so close to the sacred oaks that their branches scraped our window panes. It was us that waited for Aurora Incarnate most fervently. It was my tree that combusted.

My eyes were only for the sky and the flames. The tree itself did not burn. Dark ash powdered the bark but there wasn’t even a hint of smolder to the wood. My home, a narrow two-story nearly thirty years my senior, looked singed but otherwise unharmed. On the street behind me, I heard to shuffle of feet as the others were drawn to my place, to my tree, to my destiny.

The sky flashed white and a streak of pale blue cut across the moon. Something black and nimble landed on the highest branch and ran. I couldn’t draw a single breath as the creature bolted down the limbs and trunk, only to wind its way down to the base.

It was a cat, by all appearances. Black as midnight with a sleek body and tufted ears, it was most definitely a cat. When it sat, I collapsed to my knees. I felt my body gasp for air but I couldn’t tear my eyes or focus away from the little creature in front of me.

It looked at me then. Large, wild eyes that swirled blue and green in a dark sea that I could never truly fathom stared at me as I stared at it. We were connected, the Aurora Incarnate and me. I felt its presence deeper than I felt anything in my whole existence.

“Why?” I managed to croak. Recognition flashed in its gaze and I asked what we all had wondered all this time. “Why have you come?”

Aurora Incarnate stood. The smoke from the leaves clung to its body and swirled when it moved. A crackle of blues and greens sparked against the dead grass as it walked. Each step was cool and measured. If I had even half a mind to flee, I knew I could not. My legs shook under me like jelly and a hand to the Earth at my knees barely seemed to ground me.

The wind picked up through the untouched trees and its howl sang a solitary word, one we could all understand because we knew it so well, “Indigo.”

My other hand came down to support me. I felt the grit of cold dirt on my fingers and the soft prod of grass. Aurora Incarnate stopped just out of arms-length and flicked its tail. I knew it made the wind that spoke. At that moment, as far as I knew, it made the very mountains we lived next to. As far as I was concerned, Aurora Incarnate was everything.

“Indigo?” I whispered.

The black cat darted straight toward me. For a second, all I could see was the heavenly spin of its colorful eyes and then the world went black. The darkness seemed to go on forever and I just seemed to float in it.

Finally, I saw a streak in the dark. A black cat raced through the forest and up rocky cliffsides with ease. Blues and greens streaked behind it and left a smoldering trail in its wake. The higher it climbed, the softer the green faded away and a purple hue swirled into the blue. At the peak of the mountain, Aurora Incarnate jumped. Blackened stones sizzled on the cold ground and the cat became one with the sky once more. My vision went awash with light and color until everything went black.

When I awoke, I was surrounded by the brave witches like me that stayed for the Aurora Incarnate. We witnessed her. Behind their concerned faces, the sky was dancing in an indigo aurora borealis. My face and shoulder felt hot with pain but I still felt the euphoric rush of my encounter too overwhelmingly to feel concerned. I was alive and I had seen a folktale come to life.

“Ivy, are you all right?” my dearest friend, Marnie, whispered. Her eyes, once dark blue, were now a vibrant green.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It touched you, leapt right up and over your shoulder. You’re hurt,” she answered.

I reached up and touch the hot, tight feeling in my skin and winced. They felt like burns and the more I noticed them, the more they hurt. I felt myself drift back toward euphoria as I thought about those incandescent eyes and that wild dream from when I must have passed out.

I laughed and told her, “Your eyes are green.”

“Yours too,” she answered. “It’s just as the legend said. Can you sit up?”

I shook my head and looked past her towards the sky. The others wandered away to look up as well or to chatter. I could hear them talking.

If the legends were true, we lucky few would be so connected with the mountain that it could tell us fortunes. We could thrive on the riches of the forest, which would soon flourish in both healthy flora and fauna. We were more than witches now. We were The Chosen, just like the women who saw Aurora Incarnate nearly a hundred years prior, and I was marked to lead them.

I had been chosen. I was the most worthy. I would be the new growth that sprang forth from even the densest flames. It was always meant to be me.