Dreams on Fire {Pogue}

shelby {♔} leviane

I watched the sunrise this morning.

It was similar in many ways to the innumerable sunrises that I had watched upon with wonder prior to this one in particular, but unique in its own way, for the colors crisscrossed the canvas in a different manner, as if some great artist had decided that the palette of this morning was one of a different shade. But I suppose that’s why I spent every early hour of morning away from the confines of our own home, for if I slept through just one sunrise I might miss some great masterpiece this artist was creating, and the thought of letting a single one slip by without being seen by my own eyes struck me as horrifying.

But I hadn’t always watched the sun rise, in fact, often I would sit with my sister and watch the sun fall from the sky only to be replaced by the moon, for that was what she believed to be beautiful, the minor fall of one was just the major lift of another, and for her the sun was the fallen king and the moon the rising queen over a new dominion, with soldiers hoisting their starry swords at anyone who dared to challenge her new regime.

I never saw the beauty in it, but rather the terror of uncertainty, of the eerie light the moon cast upon each object in her kingdom, a faded, white light that wasn’t pure but rather the sight of something mischievous, as if the cause she stood behind wasn’t genuine, but rather a guise behind the calm that night seemed to offer.

I knew the dark, for it had a firm hold of my sister, and it offered nothing but calamity and chaos in place of the placidness it hid selfishly behind.

I stopped watching the sunset, for it struck some sort of irrational fear into my heart, and every sprinting step I took back towards the house while being chased by the darkness behind me was some sort of nightmare, but it was one I couldn’t be awoken from until my feet hit the wooden floors of our home, until I had pulled the covers to my chin myself since Cha’s presence still lingered outside the window.

She was just out of sight,

Of grasp,

Of sanity.

I told myself that Cha Leviane could still be saved, but the truth was she knew as well as I that this was nothing more than a lie to myself, that maybe if I repeated it over and over, if I simply believed it with every ounce of will in my body, it would somehow become true. The fragments of my sister that I so desperately attempted to piece together time and time again would for once stay, sanity wouldn’t leak from the cracks and fade at her feet, because maybe, just this once, I could say, or do, or hope for something that would change her will.

My first attempt was the sunrise.

I asked her one morning, when she had sulked into our room just as I was about to leave it, if she would care to join me in seeing the sun dot its way across the canvas of the morning sky, but her lack of reply registered as a negative response, so I had made my way out in uncomfortable silence, not even releasing a breath until my feet had crossed the threshold into the cool grass.

There was something magical about that sunrise in particular, so I had pretended that Cha Leviane was there beside me to see it. I imagined her dark hair pulled back from her face, with color in her cheeks and a twinkle in her eye as I motioned my own finger across the threshold of the sky, pretending that I was the artist, pinks and yellows falling from my own fingertips rather than whatever great mastermind sat behind the canvas himself. I wanted to take credit for the streaks of warmth that radiated across it, because then maybe I could send a smile (a gesture that would seem so foreign upon her face, considering the neutral look that most often fell across it) to the heart, or mind, or soul of Cha Leviane.

But I sat there in silence for as long as I could bear it, fiddling with the blades of grass at my feet or the loose string on my sweater until the lack of noise was some sort of deafening, and I began to mimic the tune she once hummed as she would help me fall asleep, and though it was meant for the times of night, it had worked well in the iridescence of morning light as well.

That sunrise had been beautiful, like countless ones before it, and this morning’s had been no exception. However, there was something lacking from the atmosphere that surrounded it, and I presumed the answer laid somewhere in the tangled mess of Cha Leviane.

The day had come and gone with nothing terribly interesting to note, but as I crawled in bed at the exact time my sister was about to leave, I laid a trembling hand to her arm until she came to a halt, and met my sister’s eyes for the first time in quite a while before not asking, but rather telling her the one thought that had flickered through my mind for the entirety of the previous day:

“I want you to watch the sunrise with me.”