Aurora Borealis - Beneath Northern Lights
Welcome. My proof reader took his time. In any way, here it is. Whoever finds the Steven King reference may keep it. Thank you.
Aurora Borealis
„I remember cloaking the world with a blanket of darkness, keeping it safe and making the people below me rest from their stressful lives in the heat, and the piercing light of Day. I remember soothing their minds and bringing them nighttime dreams, in which they were free to yearn and live out what they might not have had when they were awake." -Night, "When Night and Day first met" by Vovin
--
The lights were flickering again.
They did that a lot in the recent time - surely a dozen times in this night already. Fine, after all it was night since more than two months by now.
Seth tore his eyes away from the dancing veils at the horizon and continued to tramp through the snow. The only sound accompanying his heavy breathing was the cracking with which his boots broke through the blanket beneath his feet; the polar desert was a desert after all, no matter what the Discovery Channel told. A chilly shroud made of snow and ice stretched from horizon to horizon and there was nothing that granted him peace of the gleaming white all around that even now, at midnight, tormented his eyes like a thousand needles. The storm of the last days had faded away, but he still felt its bite inside his body. Ice had settled itself inside of his hood, covered his entire clothing and left even his thin face fur - one of the few things keeping him warm - dangerously exposed. Waking up in what he considered to be the early morning, he had felt frost lacerating his sensitive snout as with glimmering claws. But now, only a few hours later, every trace of pain was gone. He knew very well what that meant.
The air around him surely measured forty degree subzero and it almost surprised him that he was still able to breathe. Even his paws were burning within his gloves as if they were covered in acid; that his almost defenceless face felt no pain was a clear sign that he was about to push daisies. So now he knew that time was running out. Just great.
With a self-cynical smile, Seth pulled his leg out of the snow, made a step forwards and sunk back in to the knee. By now he was wondering if he would die because of exhaustion or hypothermia. Once more, he rued every bit of weight he was carrying. Stilting to a layer of snow as thick as this was bad enough, but the weight on his shoulders turned every step into a torture. He wouldn't survive this, there was no doubt.
And yet... while his body was dying, his spirit seemed to heal. His voyage to the North Pole had originally not been planned a journey of no return, but looking back on the weeks it went on by now, he realized that it had never been something else. Even before, he should have actually known that he had no chance to survive this. The poles were no place for the likes of him; he was a fox, yes, but no god-damned arctic fox!
So what had made him start all this in the first place? He couldn't quite say it himself. Not, that he didn't know the answer - he was afraid of voicing it. This ominous craving inside of him, this shapeless desire that urged him to the North Pole... at first he had suspected Harlequin, thought it to be one of her bad jokes, but that was not the truth he was feeling. Something bigger, greater than the phantom jester called for him, something that he had actually long identified to be a part of himself. He travelled without guide and map, but his inner compass led him unmistakably onwards, always closer to the very end of the world. And still, even while the call of that place was stronger than his survival instinct, he didn't know what he was hoping to find there. Always assuming that he ever reached it, of course.
With an angry snarl, he suppressed the thought and forged onwards. And onwards. And onwards. Hours flew by and then froze like rivers of ice - only his heavy breathing assured him that time was still passing. He was close now; he could almost grasp the feeling. And at the same time, the last bit of power was drained from his body and even his unbreakable will began to stagger. It was too late to surrender. Only a few hours more...
He didn't manage to finish that notion.
--
The flickering northern lights were the first thing he saw when he awoke. Slowly he opened his eyes, pensively watching the ethereal dance across his head, and a peacefulness he had never felt before filled him. He had obviously fallen unconscious; he could feel that he was lying on his back. Snow was everywhere around him and he knew that his time had come. The thought was surprisingly soothing. His death was almost complete and his cure with it - to die in the shimmer of the Aurora Borealis was a remarkably romantic end.
He had barely done the thought when a hoarse laughter escaped his throat. That was just...
"Bullshit. The peace you feel is your half-frozen brain. Say, mister stunning adventurer, what kind of wimpy fool are you, if I am allowed to ask." The clear laugh following those words took all sharpness from them: "Hey, let's take a walk to the pole, croak on the way and see what will happen? Oh no you dumbass, I won't stand for that!"
Seth answered with a repulsing growl. He tried to sit up, but his body refused his orders. "Very funny, Harlequin", he squawked: "And which part exactly to you hope to change?"
"The one that includes dying of course." The white, grinning face of a human woman nosed into his field of view. As ever, Harlequin wore her colourful attire and didn't seem to care about the lethal temperatures or the complete impossibility of her being here. Her gaze rested solely on him.
"Well", Seth tried to laugh and failed horribly: "I am afraid you might have a problem there. I'm not feeling too well right now, y'know?"
Harlequin's grin became wider: "Oh no, my dear. Right now you feel like a puppy in its mother's cuddle. I believe...", she giggled: "... I'll have to counteract your twaddling. Let us begin with your nerves."
She clapped, and all of the sudden her hands held a delicately crafted flute. Lifting the instrument to her lips, she began to dance around him like a Caribbean voodoo shaman. This should have looked silly - but she gave it an eerie touch. Seth's dying mind recognized the song she was playing: A silly carnival melody. Actually something completely harmless - although absurd - but he knew Harlequin too well to remain unafraid. What was she planning?
After a short while, she lowered the flute and sang in her most joyful tone: "But snow impaled his body whole; and oh, what calmness fine it stole; the bite of coldness made him weep; and ruined his complacent sleep."
Seth started screaming before she had finished her verse. His numb legs flared in sudden pain, so agonizing that he simply forgot his weakness. His body reared up in sudden anguish, in sudden power. Red circles rushed through his field of view and his ears rang so loudly that he barely understood Harlequin's next words.
"And his hands, they scream in pain; they whine and cry without restrain; and what he's breathing isn't air; I'd say that acid had its share."
And again her words seemed to rip his body out of his merciful numbness. Seth desperately pressed his paws against his snout, but the pain didn't stop.
The melody stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Harlequin stared at him and mumbled: "Okay, I knew that you don't like my style, but you can't tell me that I sing this bad."
"Shut! The fuck! Up!" In a sudden outburst, the dying fox forced himself to rise from the ground. Carried by the power of his anger, he suddenly found himself back on his feet. He would have fallen, but a pair of slender, human arms caught him mid-air. His companion put him back to his feet, adjusted his backpack and slapped him right across the face. Her laughter echoed through the entire area.
"You haven't crossed the line yet", she declared. She bowed to him until her face was only inches away from his and pushed him away.
Seth stumbled forwards. Barely realizing his environment, he dragged his body with himself. Harlequin's intervention had gathered the last of his steely determination. He'd rather die walking before surrendering again.
"How's my brother doing?", he asked without halting.
Harlequin followed him with a cartwheel: "I have to admit, he's the reason I'm here. Jacob is dead, Seth."
Now he halted. But only for a moment.
"Suicide?", he asked tautly while his body began to move again. Harlequin nodded. "That old coward. I should have known", he mumbled.
"And that's all you gonna say about it?", she grimaced and jumped after him.
"What did you expect?", even while he was talking, Seth turned away from her so that she couldn't see he was crying. Fortunately, his tears froze on his chins where the wind carried them away. "That I fall down on my knees and break out in lamentation? Forget it. It figured anyways. He never cared that I needed him, he never cared for me at all, for him there was only Josephine and no one else! She is dead as well, I guess? And just because of that he jumps off the next cliff while his little brother freezes to death at the North Pole. Awesome! Great work, you asshole!" He began to sob. And hated himself for it.
"We're there", Harlequin assessed - Seth stopped. Her voice had lacked any emotion. "This is the pole."
He stumbled a few steps further before his spirits left him once more and he sank into the snow. His mind was in utter chaos. Grief for Jacob's death, fear of his own, joy to have reached his goal... and again: peace. What ever had called him, it had fallen silent.
"Here I am", he mumbled: "Why am I here?"
He felt Harlequin stepping up to him. She knelt down, and for a moment he believed to feel how her breath caressed his face. Softly she took his hands into her own and looked at him. Her smile wasn't gloating anymore, it rather seemed... tender. "You already know." She laid something in his gloved hands.
Only then he realized that he felt the object in his hands, but nothing else. Neither coldness nor pain. He quickly got rid of his gloves and saw what lay beneath.
He had lost almost all of his fur. His skin had turned bright red and the flesh around his claws was swollen and sore. Three or four fingers were completely black - frozen, dead. And still they felt. He could easily grasp the fragile flute they were holding.
His eyes searched Harlequin's gaze, but she only smiled and looked to the sky.
Following her hint, he looked up and watched the Aurora Borealis. Saw the serpentine dance of the ethereal lights before the black of the night. Green, blue, red, yellow. Ever lighter flew the colours, ever wilder became their dance. And eventually, he understood.
"Jacob."
Harlequin nodded without turning her gaze from the sky: "He has always dreamed of seeing the Northern Lights once."
"He has called me? It was his voice?"
"No. But his will. You are brothers, Seth. He certainly didn't leave you without leaving tracks."
"But", the fox shook his head: "He was still alive when I left for this journey."
She shrugged: "Time is a face on the water."
"So he wanted me to die?"
"Such a nice question", she curled her lips: "But if I'd have to guess, I'd say that you were the one wanting it. A part of you. You loved Jacob much more than you admit."
Seth nodded shortly: "So what was his will?"
For a split second, the phantom jester looked at him. "This flute", she answered: "Belonged to Josephine."
Her companion lowered his gaze. "Then the last will of both of us will be fulfilled. Will you stay with me?"
"Until the last song is sung." She bowed towards him and kissed his cheek.
Seth allowed his eyes to wander through her face for a couple of seconds, before he raised them back to the sky and the flute to his lips. Harlequin was right. Jacob now was closer to him than ever before. He could feel the bond connecting them swing with spirit. Saw his face in the Aurora Borealis. His extended hand.
Seth's frozen lips closed around the instrument and his already dead fingers began to play the melody echoing through his thoughts. His gaze got lost in the Northern Lights.
His soul followed soon.
As she had promised, Harlequin held her guard beside his body. For months did she sit there, dreamily watching the games of the two spirits within it, spirits that now were of her kind. And whenever wild colours flickered across the sky, she thought to hear laughter, so far away that even her unearthly senses could barely catch it.
When summer came and the polar night ended, she as well left the Arctic desert behind. The two brothers had left and she rose to follow them.
Eternity awaited.