Prologue
I was still half asleep when I sat up in bed and stretched my arms out. The soft hum of the house and my clocks buzzing had broken me from my dreams. I reached over to my alarm on my night stand and switched the buzzer off, glancing at the time, 2:52 AM. My eyes were heavy with sleep but my body had a vibrant energy that seemed to come from the buildup of dim moonlight falling through my window at the other end of the room.
I slid out of bed and walked over to my window where the dim light entered the room. I pulled back the curtain to see a shining full moon that seemed to dim the stars and make the black voids of the sky even darker, like miniscule diamonds on a stretch of black velvet.
I looked back to the moon and thought, only one more hour.
My excitement had seemed to wake my entire body as I now felt ready to prepare myself for the next few hours. I turned from my window and stepped over to my vanity, grabbing a pony tail holder and peeking into the mirror. My long silver blonde hair seemed to breathe as I swept the long tendrils back into the holder; with my hair back my eyes seem to have taken their shine, glittering with an amethyst glow in my moonlit room. My adrenaline was pumping, a familiar feeling on nights like these when the only two people around are me and the stars. I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and glanced at the sketchbook next to the door.
This book contained the elements I would need to use tonight, so I grabbed it along with my oil pastels and pencils. I looked at the clock, 3:02 AM. I dropped my supplies into my bag and took off out of the room and down the stairs.
As I carefully opened and shut the front door I wondered if I should leave my parents a note, but the thought was fleeting. They knew what tonight was and they know where I would be, they wouldn’t think twice about it. Walking down the stairs to the driveway, the crisp mountain air was better than coffee. Our house stood in a grove of trees, nestled in the rolling hills of the sierras, the lack of light pollution was no problem as the moon lit everything in my path. I walked over to my bike, leaning carefully on the wall of the garage, and walked it to the end of the driveway ready to ride. With a few volleying steps I began to peddle, the wind whipping my face, rolling down the mountain towards my destination. The night was cool, the mid-autumn winds gave off that autumn smell that everyone knows but no one really points out. The night felt alive, I felt the stars watching me race towards my final stop with excitement.
It didn’t take long before I was at a small clearing about a mile down the road, it didn’t look like much from the gravelly road, just a small trail leading into the brush of the woods. I peddled right into it and onto the small worn path inside the trees. I traveled in the dim filtered light of the moon through the trees for a few minutes before I saw the clearing. The path had been mostly filtered moonlight, throwing shadows on everything around me, but once I drove into the clearing I had been riding towards, my destination, the whole sky seemed to explode.
The stars were everywhere, the whole clearing is lit almost as if sunlight had soaked into the ground to stay the night and watch the celestial event along with me. Everywhere I looked another twinkling light met my eyes, it was a crowded room with them all watching me, waiting. Everyone seemed to be waiting, observing, and ready for the events about to happen.
I checked my phone, 3:20 AM. It was time.
I walked over to the area I had set up earlier in the night, thanks to the lack of people in our small little mountain town I could trust it would be there when I came back. It consisted of a small lawn chair on a blanket coupled with the biggest telescope my parents would let me bring down to the clearing. It wouldn’t be long now, I thought, all I have to do it wait. I slumped down into the chair and turned my head towards the sky.
The moon was the center of attention tonight, the stars let him have his way and turned down their luminosity, but the real draw for me to the sky was not the moon, although beautiful, but the darkness in-between each of the celestial bodies. The dark matter, the unexplained, the space no one knew about. The darkness created an enigma which called to me at night. I could feel it down in my bones, something calling me from that darkness, something familial. A daughter of the sky, my mother’s words echoed around me as the stars seemed to whisper them.
I am beginning to lose myself to my thoughts when my phone begins to vibrate. I look down and see the clock, 3:52 AM. I look up and notice that the moon is not as bright as it was minutes ago. My heartbeat speeds up a little, the excitement of the even pulls me to draw it. I pull out my sketch book and begin sliding my pastels across the page. My paper is a flash of reds and silvers, and suddenly the clearing is dark. I wait a few minutes in the dark, the stars taking their chance and blinking in the moons sudden disappearance. I looked out into the darkness, its beckoning call inside my head, my curiosity peaking. I glanced around and looked back to the void and I see something in the darkness, something that shakes my core, and I smile.
Just as soon as it had begun, it ended. I looked around the clearing as it was relit and everything seemed the same, the only change was in the deathly still air. I felt as if the world had stopped spinning. I looked down towards my sketchbook and noticed the eerily drawn picture, the first blood moon of a tetrad, a great celestial event. That wasn’t the only thing I noticed. The darkness seems to have shifted, almost as if I could see through it, as if looking through the tulle in a ballet dancers dress, as if I could see the cosmic columns spinning if I looked close enough. The calling I had felt all my life was stronger than anything I had felt before, and I knew where it was calling me, where it had been calling me all along. I know this is just the beginning of my story, now I just have to find it. My name is Andromeda Powell, and if I’m going anywhere, it’s into that darkness.