We had drifted off to sleep after a long and event-filled day. Finally safe and cozy after being towed out of a blizzard, my sister and I were awoken by our new swedish friend, Martin.
"Come see the lights!" he said, bundled from head to toe.
It might as well have been an emergency fire drill for how quickly we were dressed and tripping over ourselves to get outside. The night was silent and clear. Our boots crunching in the snow was the only sound as we walked over to join Fanny and Martin atop the fisherman's playset. Round booeys hung from rope in place of swings. "The view is much better from up here" Martin joked. We climbed up and stood between them, all of us witnessing the auroras fully for the first time.
We looked up...
At first it was a long flat wall of silver across the northern sky. How appropriate this silver curtain was, for then the show began.
The auroras appeared delicately, taking on elongated shapes and light rolled across them exposing different colors. They moved elegantly and much like an undersea animal, like some otherworldly creature. I was overwhelmed by how alien it seemed and my eyes filled with tears, a couple spilled over, rolling down to my ears and I worried briefly that it was so cold they would leave frozen trails down my face. We spoke in hushed tones, as if our voices might spook the lights, sending them off into the distance. As an aurora would get to dancing and shifting, taking on new greens, pinks and silvers, then seemingly raining down on us from above we'd forget our silence and start jumping up and down, clapping and laughing like surprised children. An aurora stretched fully across the sky directly overhead and we all craned our necks to watch as it expanded and draped down around us.
Like a dome, I said.
A church, said my sister.
We all clasped hands. There we stood, four tiny figures in silent surrender beneath the house of god.
No comments:
Post a Comment