Something about the light…

Maybe it was the strange glow of the gloaming last night, as if the day was giving up the last of itself before darkness engulfs the world. It was an in between time. A time of possibility. Stillness. The breath before the unknown.

For whatever reason I saw it and it drew me outside for a moment in the bustling time before bed. Some days slip away unseen, but this one glowed red like the ember of something smoldering. Like the sudden, searing news of tragedy that hit unexpectedly close to home yesterday. Like the anger that’s been building from the news over these past days (months, years). The petty discontents of work and life.

Another image loomed in my mind. A calm place far from this, of another more hopeful time when boys and problems were small. Along a different border.

What if…?

And so it sprung forth like Athena, full grown from her father’s head. I pulled my laptop to me and words rushed out. What I thought would be a small scene that would release me from the grip of the gloaming stretched and breathed. Over two thousand words later I came up for air.

There.

The boys were on their way. The journey begun.

And now I could rest.

I closed the screen of the laptop and turned out the light, stretching in the stifling air of the sudden summer. My cheek rested on the cool side of the pillow. But sleep would not come. Instead more thoughts flooded in. Like I’d encountered all the pieces of this puzzle in my life and the relevant ones were threading back to me, disparate, but inextricably linked as though they’d been waiting for this story, this escape.

Minutes ticked by and my head pulsed with the flood of ideas. Wrestled with a code I knew I’d write but couldn’t yet read. Eventually I flipped the lamp back on and pulled my notebook from the drawer of the bedside table. Again words poured out. Instead of a scene, this time it was the map of how the story would unfold. Things they would say. Allusions to another epic journey. Questions about motivation and universal truths. Through it all the parallels piled up. Isn’t it funny how those pieces fit? News. Novels. Family memory and legend. As if those characters were fated to fill those roles.

It’s a summer story. Now I’m ready for summer to begin. There are hundreds of miles and thousands upon thousands more words to go.

Still bits seep out in the light of morning. Breadcrumbs in my notebook to lead the way.

Two ravens stand sentinel.