Rayne

Beautiful darkness hung over the world, brilliant and mesmerizing. Moonlight caressed skin in soft beams, as the air swirled in its pure light. The air was chilled, somehow fresh and sweet, alive, just as the grass of these interminable hills sang with dew and the rich scent of earth. Thick brown trunks as old as time and space and life stretched above the earth, offering their rich canopies of green to the heavens. This night was perfect, as perfect as the peace that settled over her in these hours, lying on a slope, brown locks tumbling down the grass. She gazed up at the sky above, and the perfect shards of glass that shaped constellations and signified life, so very far beyond her imagination, and she smiled. It felt like every part of her everyday life was slipping away, and she loved it. She wondered if the touch of death would be as sweet and beautiful as this place, and all at once, she considered how nice it might be to die. She had no religious beliefs to speak of, but she longed, so deeply yearned for something more; for another, brighter light to blink on as the lights of this world faded out. She felt that desire sink into every moment of her life. To be more, do more, see more. She craved adventure and love and excitement and acceptance. Here in the darkness, cool air in her lungs, and moonlight playing on her skin, she knew herself, and she was not Carla Hall, introverted academic, wandering over-bright halls, sterile in their fluorescent light, and buzzing with hormone-ridden adolescents, resentful of this tidy cage. She was not the girl who sat silently at lunchtime, thoughtfully chewing her food while noise echoed around her. She was not Carla Hall, who her parents bragged of to their friends, and whose cooking abilities did not go unharnessed. No, she was not any of these things, and all that left her as, she realised, was nothing. An empty shell of a carbon-based life form, glowing in moonlight… if she was not Carla Hall, than was she anything at all? A cool breeze blew, and sections of her hair flew in her face. She grabbed at one of the locks, one of the rich brown waves, and glared at it. What was the purpose of this hair? To sit there are look… regular. Who was she to hide in plain sight, as a quiet, friendless achiever? What made her so insignificant that she should step through this life and fade from it, unnoticed, just a shadow flickering on the wall of eternity? It was not petty high-school popularity she craved; she desired more than hair dye and tissue-stuffed bras and boys wolf-whistling- not that she had experienced any of these things. No, she wished, more than anything in this world, to simply be spectacular for once, to mean something to someone beyond grades and numbers. To do something worthy of a tale, some incredible thing worthy of being transferred into the glory of the written word. She wanted to do something, and by the god she held no faith in, she would do it.
“No more Carla Hall.” She told the stars, “There are mysteries for me to dabble in, in this world, and I’m going to dabble.” She closed her stone grey eyes and smiled lightly; revelling in the embrace of the cool, liquid dark, and the world disappeared before her lidded eyes. Goodbye, Carla Hall her mind hummed, and she felt herself open up to the world like never before. She was nameless, and new, and she knew exactly the woman to visit when the sun chose once more to steal away the stars.