2100

The barbed wire kept them separated, animals in cages that could see and speak with each other, but that had no physical interactions. Too much had passed between them to sever their mental connection, and yet they fought against their bonds in an attempt to find a way out. Or a way in, whichever one accomplished their goals for them most expediently. It had been a long, hard year living in the camps, with the green and gold lights turning on and off in synchronous rhythm, and with the dogs howling nonstop until all hours of the night. And that’s when she came.

They were staring at the large clock on the main retention building at midnight, together, yet apart, as they often were at the dawning of a new day, the man and the boy. Illuminated by giant fog lamps, the building took on a ghastly yellow glow not unlike sickly skin. They weren’t staring because of the view, however. They stood in those exact two spots, facing East, every night because it was when the second moon traded places with the first and could be seen with the naked eye. Even though the retention building only offered a partial view of the moon juxtaposition, it was the best they could aspire to, and they treasured it as if it were iron.

The woman emerged from the shadows to the North, which is why they didn’t register her presence initially, when she stepped out of the shade into the full light of a glow much brighter than their world had known before or since. As the second moon slid in front of the first its light was eclipsed by the advancing brilliance surrounding the woman, who was both a woman and not a woman at the same time. The boy turned first and immediately dropped to the ground in a swoon. He lifted his hands to cover his eyes that seemed to be burning in their sockets. An agonizing moan escaped his lips, and he writhed in pain. The man had it slightly better as he had seen what happened to the boy before he turned. Instead of gazing upon the woman who was and was not a woman, he kept his eyes trained to the ground where her image was reflected in the intense beam of light surrounding her. It was barely enough to keep him upright.

She walked through the barbed wire fence into his cell as the second moon followed the first into oblivion, her lips a cherry red with a small smile playing a game of tag across them. Her straight black hair framed a face that could not be described, although it was divinely pale and devoid of scars. As she approached his trembling form, the man held his breath, knowing that it was his one moment in time to make a true difference in his world. Knowing that once she touched him the world would never be the same. And knowing that he couldn’t do anything to stop her from touching him, a fact that at once both repelled him and gave him an odd sense of solace.

Then she did touch him, deep within the vortex that kept him alive, and infused it with blinding light that took away his eyesight forever. But he would have gladly traded away his very life to feel that free, that open, as when she first made contact. A hum reverberated in the air, eclipsing the dying sounds of the boy in the next cell over, as the two moons were also eclipsed by the very nearness of her. As the man melted into the essence of her, he realized for the first time the true meaning of existence. The irony failed to escape his feeble mind as he became absorbed into her.

Far across the camp a nightingale began singing a plaintive tune as divinity approached in a blazing ball of light.

Sam