Before Dawn

By Charli C.

The world at night breathes in a steady rhythm, much different from the daylight hours.

Everything is softer. It's a time where even humanity is but an undertone, allowing the rest of the world to rise to the surface. My window is a portal. Yet I can only gaze at the stars. I call to them. Their answer is subtle, but it's there. Like a note played in the background of a grand symphony, something few people listen for but the music couldn’t exist without. It’s not the reason you listen to the harmony, but once you hear it, you begin to appreciate it so much more. Their response is not audible but a feeling, the strange and quiet Eden only the edge of dusk brings.

It's funny, I think, how I feel closer to the stars than I have ever been to humanity. I sit in their company and listen. The stars. The night sky. The wind. The last smear of orange, red, and pink fading on the horizon. The world doesn’t sleep, and the sky is awake with light, eyes crawling across the heavens. I’ll admit I cannot count the stars by name. I don’t have to pretend. They don’t know my name, either. We don’t need it for what are names, but words for the mouths of others? Stars don’t have a mouth; they are eyes, to watch and nothing more.

My mind clears of smoke. I reach the end of the path and watch the sun fall. Beneath my feet, my shadow joins hands with the shadow of the earth. No longer am I aware of where I end and the universe begins. Silence. Cosmic bliss. I like to imagine there is something beyond the sky, an opalescent space of dreams. The night sky reaches out, ten thousand lightyears, ten thousand open arms in a cosmic embrace. I reach back, but the eon spans between. The threshold is open, but the gravity remains. For now, I seek asylum in the rare moments of solitude. Someday, gravity won’t hold me back.

Eternity stares me in the face when I listen to the night-time world. My mind is an ocean. It is calm for now. A sea reflected in the sky; stars melding with my thoughts, projecting them for eternity in the vast astral cycles. If someone were to look down from a star millions of years into the future, they would see a galaxy. That galaxy has an arm, the Orion arm of the Milky Way. In that arm, they would see a solar system: eight planets in orbit around a yellow dwarf star. If they look closer, they might see planet Earth, perhaps even North America. In the countryside, they would find me staring back at them from a solar system that might not even exist. No, that’s very unlikely.

I open my eyes. Maybe nobody is watching. Maybe nobody stares back. The stars do. They don’t care about the hopes and dreams of humanity. They are there to watch. We are all insignificant in the immeasurable scale of the universe. Earth. Our history. Me. You. It means nothing. Nothing means everything in a world gone mad. Time is a river of sand through an hourglass, yet we’re going against the current. Once it’s passed, we must keep going or be swept away and buried. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back; quite the opposite. The sand falls in a pattern; History repeats itself. The stars move across the sky like physical manifestations of these grains of time.

Stars set into motion long ago join an ageless dance across the sky. We, too, are part of that dance. Whirling to the music of infinity.

Always the same. Repeating cycles. At least we’re not alone; that I know for certain.

Nuclear chaos, from which the dance began, expanding outward towards the edges of reality. It lies at the back of our minds, hoping to draw us back to the primal places beyond our memory: the place where the ocean meets the sky, where dreamers go when they sleep.

Otherworldly and strange, the thoughts expand in the minds of those who gaze at the stars, especially those who stop and listen. I close my eyes, and suddenly, I can see. I’m borne away into the arms of the stars. Hands hold me in a cradle of light, pulling me into the sky—footsteps in the stardust. I walk alone over a road to a glorious new reality. I turn around. The earth rises in the distance, ablaze with an aureole of fire. I finally turn to the stars. Gravity no longer holds me down.

Crowns of fire and ice slice through the vacuum.

Eternal freedom; my chains lie on the floor ten thousand lightyears away.

Ancient whispers trail my fingertips across the constellations.

Nothing became everything.

Instantly changing, twisting. Prospective intertwining with the truth.

Now, I stand by the waters of a vast ocean of sky. Am I seeing myself? In the reflection, a twisted, chaotic knot of color.

Within the knot lies a heart. It beats in the rhythm of the universe, to the strange music in my head.

I see the heart now. My heart. It’s bleeding rivers of light, dripping into the pearlescent silvery waters.

Carefully, I drop it into the sea, making sure my hands don’t leave it.

Heat radiates from the silver drop. The water begins to boil. The salty air fills my lungs. Mist rises from the surface into the sky where two moons circle.

Waves churn in my head while the ocean is still and silent, smooth like diamond dust on an obsidian mirror.

Everything becomes nothing again.

All at once, the stars seemed to drift apart, a great hole opening in the sky itself, devouring everything. Darkness consuming light.

Reality distorted. I was pulled from the sea, clutching the strings and heart. I plunged into the black hole, hoping for a sanctuary on the other side. The darkness consumes the light, stars becoming gossamer threads in the void. The only light that remained was my heart. Even that faded into the darkness along with the strings.

Ethereal music continues in my head.

Angelic. Drifting. Psychic hurricanes. Teeth and eyes.

Lies. twisted truth. Poison.

Love. Ocean. Sky.

Abhorrent flesh. Shadows. Glorious new dawn.

Dreams. Distance. Other worlds than this.

Refluent. Waxing. Waning. Sinking. Resurfacing. Me, Myself, and I.

Idiosyncratic tides over shores of purest white sand. The tide goes out. I rise. Wingbeats. I open my eyes.

Fading light breaks the horizon. I lie in the darkness before dawn. It's still silent before the world has woken up. I don’t want to wake up. People speak of life, while I prefer the fantasy of dreams. They speak of time like they have it to spare; I do not. They extol romance, a feeling I do not feel or seek. Two worlds collide into one.

Twilight breaks. The rose of dawn blooms. The world wakes. Today, all is well.