Reflections of Beauty

Dark... Brooding... It’s chaotic, the slate grey majesty of her destructive power... The sliding temptress, beneath a sky of blinding white light, forming a barrier as impassable as the death that bound this place, crashes against the rocky pinnacle of a deserted, sandy shore littered with those footfalls of they who had imprinted their meaning, their work onto the earth... There is an atmosphere of memories, of a time long passed, of watchers who saw too much and felt too little of what had come to pass... secrets, desires, fleeting emotions that all left a little bit of themselves behind when they moved on or were forgotten. Discarded. Abandoned... This place was old... as old as time and full of deep, ancient thoughts... death and pain and hope and the remnants of life...

The girl stood on the dark rocks just above the waterline, staring sorrowfully out at the turbulent mass of writhing souls, the currents of the dead... her eyes glowed green as the storm tossed waves and her tattered shift billowed in the shrieking winds, oblivious to the biting cold of the torrential spray, kicked up by the furious waves that raged against the crags, seemingly determined to crumble them to dust beneath her bare feet. Amidst the tempestuous fury that encompassed, her the girl sank to her knees, her movements as fluid, as graceful as the waters beneath her, undisturbed, unperturbed by the violence around her, locked as she was in her own mind, amid the savage beauty of the place she dwelt in... Captivated by the desolate wasteland, the empty, haunted earth upon which the ocean beat, pulsing with life, with death, with power, with throbbing, poignant emotion, she stared out at the terrible beauty displayed before her. Casting her mind back, her dead heart pulsing with the crashing ocean waves, she sought solace this cold night, in this empty place, solace and inspiration, guidance from the only living thing left to her...

She stared down at the ocean, thinking of that fateful night... the night her heart shattered, the night her world ended, the night... she died. Every fatal second of that hellish night was burned into her memory, every second she was tormented by those final moments... No misery even this place could create could mangle her soul, tear her apart, keep her in weeping agony...  for the hell in which she stood could not hurt her... The anguish in her mind, the demons in her past, her tortured memories... these consumed her, kept her suffering, a sorrow unsurpassed by any that this place could ever inflict upon her... 

It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life... it had been perfect. The man she had loved for most of her life had proposed to her. She was engaged to be married! The jubilance she felt that night, she couldn’t remember ever being that happy! It was like a high, like bubbling champagne, like pure contentment, like bliss. They drove home that night soaring on the ecstasy, the pure wonderment of the love they had for each other, the fact that they had found each other in this brutal world, the life they shared and the one they were going to build. It had been the most amazing feeling, that joy, that happiness... and then... it ended.

Some drunken idiot had swerved into their lane, and on the wet, slick road that ribboned its way down a precipitous cliff, their fate was sealed. He had veered to the side to avoid a collision with the other driver and slammed into the side of the cliff face. There was a screeching of twisted, tortured metal and the flash of blazing sparks on the road. Then all she knew was pain... every part of her body screamed with it, as she, dazed and confused, her body battered, broken and bloody lay there... then she heard, through the fog hazing her mind, her name called in tones of desperation and fear... She groaned and shifted as the fog cleared. Blinking, she looked around and screamed as she saw the tiny outcropping she lay upon, just out of reach of the top of the cliff. She heard the rocks beneath her shift and screamed again, a sound choked with fear and tears... She peered down over the edge of the outcropping and saw far below her the stormy ocean waves swirling against the jagged rocks reaching hungrily up far below her... She let out a faint whimpering noise and scrambled back, feeling, in her growing panic the shift in the ground beneath her... terrified, she called out his name, hoping against all odds that he was okay... she looked up and saw him above her, his arms stretched out to try and grab her. She reached up... There was the flash of lightening ripping through the sky... rock crumbling... fingertips meeting... then falling... falling and screaming... staring up at him, his face a mask of terror and shock and pain and fear and a wordless denial... I love you... her last thoughts before... BOOM! Impact.

Now here she stood... on a barren, deserted beach in hell... for she would not allow herself to go to heaven... Her soul was good, but she would not leave hell, her grief, her pain was so great... she glanced down at the rocks behind her, thinking of the past, trapped in it, unable to escape, unable to find solace, to free herself of the pain... and was jolted into awareness of the present when she saw something that should not exist in this dead place...

 A single yellow flower, a simple daisy, grew upon the rock below her... Her eyes teared up as she stared at that single, fragile, beautiful impossibility. They were her favourite flowers, he had bought her a bouquet on their first date... always sunny and cheerful he said, just like her. The storm raged on, unabated but she could not care now. For the first time in a thousand days she smiled, and it was truly a sight to behold, one as beautiful as heaven ever could be. For the first time in so long she felt something other than the restless, painful storm... Laughter... She jumped down to the stone and stared at the daisy, the vivid detail, the bright color and she smiled. She could not believe it was real but she felt it, soft, delicate, alive. There was strength there, strength, power and endurance... the patience to grow through tons of rock, strength to grow so far and courage to grow in such a place as it did... and it possessed all three and more to survive in hell, a place with no life...

She stood again and there was no sadness in her any more. Just calm acceptance of her fate, of the pain she suffered... for like the flower she could survive this. She would be with her love again soon enough... she lifted her eyes to the blinding white sky and felt warmth on her face for the first time in so long... she felt a release, a sense of peace and overwhelming joy before the light consumed her and she vanished from those rocks in hell... there was a rushing sound and more light and then silence... in hell, upon that rocky dead beach, tranquil waters moved upon a silent, serene ocean... peaceful... content... Calm.