Morning Glow

The wind beats at a young woman’s skirt as she looks towards the dark horizon. The air whipping around her smells fresh and sharp Where are you? What are you doing? Her mind screams at her to answer, but she can barely herself think over the deafening crash of the waves beneath, and the answers to her question feel locked away behind the door of a heavy safe. The cold coastal air nips her as her black skirt flutters around her. How’d you get here? She’s out of breath, her short pumps are muddied as the heels sink into the ground. Why were you running? Despite having no memory to speak of, she feels certain that she is running away from something. No one in their right mind would run for pleasure on a stormy early morning before the sun has even risen, in shoes they can barely walk in and a dress that threatens to tangle around their feet. Now, there’s nowhere else to run. If there is something pursuing her, it will be here soon. She scans the area, trying to find any way to escape a possible pursuer. The ground drops on three sides around her, pebbles falling over 50 feet into the dark water below. If the fall didn’t kill her, the shock of the cold water would paralyze her, making it impossible to escape the icy depths. Here on the cliffside, no matter how stiff the cool air makes her joints, no matter how frozen she feels by fear and confusion, at least she can move and, just maybe, avoid being taken by whatever force compelled her here.

She turns around, distantly seeing the jewel-like lights of the house softly illuminating the ivy walls that surround the building. More than anything, she wishes she were back there, somewhere safe, warm, and suffocating.

She tries to run back up on the foot-trodden path but is stopped. A shock of pain runs down her spine as she crashes into an invisible wall and is thrown back onto the damp dirt. For a

 moment, she cannot move. Staring down at a puddle beside her, she realizes that she cannot see her face in the reflection. It’s not just distorted by the way dim light reflects on a natural puddle. There’s just nothing there except for the still image of the moon reflected in the puddle. The puddle doesn’t change; the water seems frozen in place, and the sound of the waves has stopped. The wind no longer rustles through the weeds. Her dress doesn’t move except with the movement of her feet. Everything but her is perfectly still. What is happening to you? She doesn’t feel like herself, divorced from so much of her memory and now even her own appearance.

“Help me!” She screams to no one. “Please!” Someone must hear her, there are always people in the house, she thinks, though she’s not quite sure how she knows that fact. Someone will come to save her, they have to. They wouldn’t leave her sitting alone, screaming until her voice goes horse or until she freezes. As she yells, she places a hand over her heart. Instead of finding soft silk, her hands land upon a hard broach, pinned to close a tear in her dress. Her fingers trace the piece of jewelry, recognizing it from touch alone. They run along the smooth, curved lines that end in hard uneven ends. Closing her eyes, she pictures it, the smooth gold lines connect the jade flowers with small diamonds at their centers. She can practically see the jewels glittering like tears in a too-full eye. One of the flowers is broken, cracked in half. It always has been. For her whole life, it has been broken. She hovers over the broken flower with its jagged edges, the feeling bringing her back to her childhood, to the first time her father pinned it on her: her inheritance. At the time, she didn’t think she had ever seen something more beautiful. The first time she wore it, she noticed the imperfection standing out among the delicate craftsmanship. At the time, it had bothered her, the break sticking out to her like a sore thumb in this otherwise perfect object, but over the years, she has begun to appreciate the imperfection.

 The feel of the uneven break and of the cold metal and stone warming beneath her fingers calm her slightly; they tie her back to herself. The incomplete reminder of her imperfect past causes her to feel a pit in her stomach. Something, beyond being trapped in some invisible cage, is wrong; she can nearly grab the memory that would explain what exactly that is, but whenever she tries to access it, it slips away. Still, she doesn’t give up trying; there is something important there, but it is just out of reach.

She tries to take stock. She unclasps the pin, trying to make out the colors in the light of the static moonlight. In the bright white of the diamonds, she can see the flash of a burial shroud.

The image unfolds in front of her. Hours before, she had stood beside an open pit, throwing a handful of dirt on top of a figure bathed in white fabric, trying not to think about whose body lay there. Now, she tries to remember everything she can about the man in the grave, the same man who had first given her the pin she holds now. The image of her father she creates in her mind’s eye she knows is overly rosy, that in reality, he was deeply flawed. In the silence of the unmoving night, she can still hear him berating her for cowardice when she would act out of fear, not morality.

She’s terrified now. The invisible barrier is slowly moving, forcing her to her feet as it pushes her towards the steep drop-off. Scrambling, she tries to fight back against the unexplained force. It’s got some give to it, like a trampoline or a sturdy screen door. Maybe, if she pushes hard enough, she will be able to break through and be free. But the bubble, or wall, or whatever force she doesn’t have the words to explain, just keeps pushing her. Her feet drag against the ground, mud bunching up behind her as it moves her. She continues to scream as she finds herself helpless. No one hears her, she knows that. The whole time she has been up here, the sky

 hasn’t changed; the low moon has stayed static in the predawn sky. Somehow, time has frozen her here. Everything but her and this force has stopped.

Less than 15 feet from the edge of the cliff, mere minutes from plunging to her death, she stops fighting it. She walks towards the edge, taking a seat with her feet dangling off the edge. She’s not afraid anymore. A strange kind of peace falls over her as she stares across the horizon. In those last moments before the barrier makes it to her, she tries to remember the good in her life. She doesn’t want her last moments to be controlled by the all-consuming dark loneliness that surrounds her or by regrets of all she never did. Instead, she thinks of the people she loves, the ones far away and the ones in the house who will notice her absence in the morning. The only regret on her mind is that she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye; that they won’t know what happened. She’ll either have disappeared into the night, or they will find her at the bottom of the cliff. She hopes that somehow they will know what happened and how truly, deeply she loves them.

She feels the barrier push against her, but she doesn’t fall over the edge. Rather, it begins enclosing her on all sides. The pressure as the bubble constricts is suffocating. As she struggles for air, she resents that the universe was not even so kind to give her a quick and merciful death. The universe is not only taking everything she is away from her but is doing so in such a cruel manner. Suddenly, as she feels consciousness slipping away, the reflection of the moon off the water fading from her vision, she feels a shock, and the weight is lifted. She gasps for breath as her lungs fill back up with oxygen. The crash of the waves returns, and when she opens her eyes, the rising sun is glinting on the water.

 The darkness is gone, and as she finds herself bathed in a warm sunrise. The sun reflects off the pin. Slowly, she stands up, cautiously backing up from the cliffside before making her way toward the house. As she walks, she revels in the morning glow illuminating her world.