Remembering the Moon by Laura Crean

Remembering the Moon - Chapter One - Mysterious Moments

CHAPTER ONE - Mysterious Moments

The clearest and brightest night that ever existed will be emblazoned in my memory until time disappears into infinity and space becomes the playground of our future selves - mankind or whatever we will become when we have destroyed this beautiful planet and probably most of the life on it as well.

That night I saw the universe through another's eyes, an innocent soul whose whole being was intent on finding me. In one night my eyes would see a miracle and a vision of such angelic purity that my heart would never again be able to contain its simple earthly beat.

As I was sitting in the garden after a hard day's labour on my new patio, cigarette in one hand, lager in the other, my eyes drifted to the clear dark sky. Stars seemed to be blinking into existence just for me, saying, "Tonight is a new era, a time of new beginnings and clarity!" My breath once drawn in seemed to refuse to exhale and my eyes automatically focused on a small group of stars that appeared to draw me deep into their beauty, their mystery.

I drank in the intoxicating air of the south coast as it drifted lazily across the two rows of houses separating me from the sea. Eastbourne pier would be alive with activity tonight, but I could not bare the thought of the noisy club music and drunken revelers or the gaudy blinking slot machines stealing my hard earned wages. I could not even bare to smell the greasy kebab shops and fish and chips that pulled in the punters on a summer's night like this. Not even a pleasant evening's walk along the promenade with its bright row of perpetual Christmas like lights could tease me from my spot tonight.

I considered myself a hard working man, not a day sick in ten years! I paid my council tax, I lived life to the full, but something was missing. Something that meant that this night was calling me to stay home alone in the garden, gazing at the starlit night with an uneasy and rather disconcerting feeling growing by the second that something was going to happen to change my life forever.

I scanned the skies but returned to the group of stars that again compelled me to stare - why could I not pull my eyes away?

A movement, very slight, very subtle pulled my attention to the left. My eyes automatically followed the unconscious cue and I tried to focus in on the slightly distorted pattern of stars. Was there a movement? Was something flying towards me?

My heart started to quicken its beat and my arm hairs started to prickle, a feeling as if a slight electric charge in the air sharpened my senses and I smelled something sweet and musky, what was that, some sort of perfume or just the evening sea breeze that was arousing me? And then a sound, very quiet in the distance, as if a sigh and a weeping on the wind...

I sat like that for a while longer, my breath held in anticipation of something, anything to break the reverie and remind me of real life. I continued staring into the gloom trying to focus on...what? A shimmering in the air? A hope of some answer to the question of meaning in my simple, benign existence?

I let out a slow, warm breath and the smoke from my cigarette curled out as if escaping an ancient dragon's wrinkled nostrils. The smoke for a second restricted my view and as I squinted to see through the smoky haze, a sudden snap of a branch at the end of my one hundred and eighty foot garden caused me to whip my head around in the direction the sound had come from.

Now it was my ears straining - to catch another sound.

The smoke started to annoy me; it was in my way, polluting the purity of the moment. I dropped the cigarette, stamping it out and absently kicked it into the newly dug bed, and then I furiously tried to wave away the smoke eventually giving up and carefully stepping through this eerie insubstantial curtain separating real life in a coastal town and whatever was lying in wait at the end of the lawn past the untended vegetable patch.