Worlds Collide

Worlds Collide

The winter wind traces the mountainside, soothing the glacier into a sound night’s sleep. Humming peacefully, I fly across the black sky. I collect snowflakes and dot them into the sky to shine brightly from above. There, they will watch over the world as stars. When the dawn approaches, my stars will fade into her glow, but for now they are mine to cherish, the only beautiful points of light in the peaceful dark.

My sigh sends a howling wind overtop the glaciers. Light. How beautiful. I have only ever seen glimpses of dawn’s light, dancing its way onto the horizon as I grow weary. While I rest in the caves of the glaciers, under the cover of trees, and in the shadow of rocks, the day presides over the earth. She wakes the human and animal world, sometimes gently and sometimes harshly, and has them set about with their adventures. They dance through their waking lives brightly, then I return and gather them in my embrace so they may sleep soundly in my arms.

In the twilight afterglow, I muse about the daytime. Each time I take to the sky, I feel her warmth still faintly heating the ice. As I paint my dreamscape of stars, I wonder what it would be like to bask in her light.

So strong is my curiosity that one day I rouse from my daytime rest, intent to meet her. I gather all my strength and then some. With a cloak of shadow, I rise in the sky to say hello. The spirit of the daytime turns to me, washing me in her bright rays.

“For millennia now, I have seen your light reach over the horizon at dawn. I imagined great beauty. But no stretch of my imagination could compare to the beauty before me.”

The daytime spirit recovers quickly from her surprise. “You are the peace that follows my light,” she muses.

“I am. I am the night itself,” I answer.

“I have thought of you, too,” she admits, “In the shadowy places I cannot reach, I see you offer respite to the mortal life below. I have wished to know you,”

“I am yours to learn, my daylight,” I offer.

She turns fully to me then, and all at once I take her in my arms, and with a celestial kiss we form a glorious eclipse.

We meet in the forest. A strand of my shadow, side by side with her sunbeam, we relax into the sound of the forest stream, the softness of the moss below. From our first conversation, we are as old friends.

Aurora, as I learn she is called, does not kiss me again, and I do not ask. Our time together is far more intimate, anyway. She tells me of the joys of daytime, and I sing her the sweet lullabies of night. But I am weary in her daytime, and I can never spend long with her before my mind dulls into a great heaviness and I drift off, fighting sleep each time before giving in.

“Nox,” she calls to me. I wearily rise from my slumber and search for her. “Nox,” she calls once more. I find the haze of her twilight, dwindling back down over the horizon to make space for my black skies.

“Aurora,” I answer, reaching for her. But all my energy is spent from denying myself sleep during the day. She is gone before I reach her. Her light has faded, and I am alone.

The night sky always felt solitary, never lonely, not until I knew what joy the daytime held. Not until I knew Aurora. Now, I plot my stars in the sky, but they feel like poor imitations of her searing beauty.

Determined to stay awake, I meet her at dawn.

“Aurora!” I cry.

She yawns and stretches, sending shoots of soft pink rays across the waking sky. Tired though she may be, she lights up at the sound of my voice. But there is a bitter sadness there, as well.

“Nox,” she greets me. I reach for her, but she holds me at a distance. I withdraw, waiting for her words.

“We cannot work, Nox,” Aurora says. “We are of different worlds. I am day, you are night. There is a natural order that cannot be broken.”

Pain threatens to break me into billions of tiny pieces. When I fall backwards into the shadows, sleep is a sweet escape.

For more time than I can bear, we pass each other by in silence. I relinquish the sky to her without a word and pretend not to feel her gaze as her daylight fades to my night. Until one twilight, she speaks to me once more.

“Nox,” her voice little more than a whisper. “I’d like to give you a gift, if you’ll have it.” I dare to look at her. A small, white ball of light floats through the sky to me.

“What is it?” I ask warily. These are the first words I have spoken since I last spoke to Aurora.

“It is me. A piece of my light, a way for me to stay with you in the night. If you’d like my company, that is.” Sadness tinges her voice in a way I cannot bear.

“Thank you,” is all I can offer.

The moon, her lovely little gift to me, hangs in my sky, casting a faint glow of Aurora through my sky. Silently, her light warms my heart again.

“I have something for you as well,” I tell Aurora some time later. As my black sky fades into her bright blue one, I unfurl my hand and send gentle wisps towards her. I give her clouds, so that they may cast shadows of me and keep her company during her daily reign. As she receives my gift, her bright happiness warms me more than I care to admit. There is a new peace between us. A spark of what once was.

Once more, we dapple the forest in shadows and light. And now, she comes to me as well, lit by the moon and my stars. Still, we tire.

“Aurora,” I ask one day. “Would you like to stay with me?” Curled together, light and dark, she joyfully agrees.

“But how?”

Our idea is quite simple, really. Every year, we shift the heavens anew to be together, to be our home. I paint the sky black, coating the earth and sky alike, while my beautiful Aurora casts her light. As our worlds, she transforms into rich colors of green, blue, and purple across my black sky of stars, while I watch her in awe. As nature groans, aching to pull us apart, we cling to one another in the everlasting delight of our sweet love, stretching the seasons so we may be together a little while longer. The natural order keeps us apart, yes, but together we create a new way. No force could separate what is meant to be together. Our love prevails.