Dawning

• Rebecca Zeng, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2022

Clouds.
White celestial boats harbouring against navy tides. They don’t have a destination, floating where the wind takes them. A simplicity that comes and goes.

It stabilises me.

“It’ll all be gone,” you say, in hopes of convincing me… about me, thinking that your words could reverse time.

“Sure,” I reply, because that’s the package deal.

“The sunsets, the sunrises. Nights at Sue’s eating ice-cream dipped fries. Your favourite poem, Bright Star. The clouds.”

You’re smiling at nothing. For once, I luxuriate in the present with you, and look towards the half-open window at rose-tinted clouds. Time is honey slow.

“It’s all an illusion, the sunset’s beauty. At the end of the day, even they leave.”

“You can be part of that reality.”

I know deep down that I don’t belong in the world’s intricate balance. The way trees transpire or symbiotic animals connect. The way the sun paints artworks across the world. The way the Earth spins majestically as 8 billion people breathe and nothing stops for me.

There’s something akin to sad understanding as you look at me. Never pity. You’re beautiful, I realise, not like me, a beast in human hide. You see the world in a lens I cannot afford, and wait for my answer.

So I whisper in summary, “Why do you care about someone like me?”

“Because I love you.”

Your sincerity opens a hole in the clouds with a ray too intense, and I am stunned.

“Why, you’re not even real,” I choke.

“You don’t see it, but it’s all around you.”


And then I am plunged into a midsummer's night dream, where the floor slips from beneath me and I am free falling. Thoughts that are vultures screech above, holding me hostage as the tempest grows and rocking waves pull at my ankles. Replicating the motions, I grope for air, and sink underwater.
In another universe, a desk lamp that may or may not be mine flickers in the reflection of a half open window.

Tallies of battle scars.
Screaming voices that sound like a requiem
Or maybe just bullets.
In space, sound waves cannot travel,
and I am suspended within the stars, unheard
Away, yet at peace.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art…

But you are there and you are neither a person nor an angel.
You are the sunsets and sunrises. You are Sue, laughing as we name scruffy pigeons, or photoshop faces onto various items. You’re the stranger who let me under your umbrella, or the peace offerings of dinner. You’re the clouds, ever changing, always present.

You are with me now, on the windows ledge
We could fly or we could fall. We are hope and we are despair. Beauty and the Beast.

Our clasped hands are tiny against the expansive, free sky.
“Together we have the power to see the sun rise once more.”

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath…

“The others are waiting. The dawn is on the other side.”