by Jacq Lee
Looking out the window, the sky is a matte black canvas, odd pools of grey frothing about in indiscernible patterns, waves of dull silver cloth undulating in a pool of boiling darkness. It was only when the sky opened up into a brilliant, empty black that I realised the plane was in a cloud, tearing it apart and dragging its entrails across the night sky.
Below us, the sea, or rather a mere notion of its existence that could not be in any manner visually identified, somewhere down in the depths of the emptiness that so plagues the exterior of this plane, a never-ending void that resembles something between the Sirens and Medusa, a mere gaze too lengthy that might spell out a one-way ticket to the murky bottom of this bottomless chasm, this unnaturally and unrelentingly intoxicating pit of Tartarus. The darkness is inviting; a romanticised embodiment of the Grim Reaper, except without the Grim or the Reaper or even the scythe. All that remains is the insistence of non-existence.
As the plane is propelled forth through the stratosphere, a piece of land unceremoniously interrupts the panorama by invading the narrow field of view this small window affords. Its silhouette tracing an outline across the horizon, carving out a space of its own to inhabit if not just for a few moments worth. The shadows of the headland inch forward steadily, unfazed by the hooded darkness threatening to devour it whole, until eventually all that could be seen are splotches of green and brown and grey, morphing into a concoction of earth and all that it carries.
It didn’t take long for the lights to start appearing: tiny specks of amber flickered like fireflies in the wind. The lights travelled in flocks, or rather like schools of fish, their placement and positions erratic yet moving as if they are a single unit, the various branches of orange and yellow forming constellations that mirror the sky above them, a million eyes blinking love letters back to the heavens, a confession written almost as daringly as the people that live within these spheres of gold, and just for a moment every single life, every single breath was visible under the waning moonlight.
The clouds have always been the more envious children of the skies, not unlike when they strut forward, strides full of purpose as they attempt to occlude the stars from witnessing Earth’s heartfelt message. The wall of grey loomed over the lights, standing tall as it hovered over the lands, a duvet smelling of putrid doom. The clouds send sparks down towards the soil, bolts of electric blue that cast shadows onto themselves, providing a mere suggestion of the gargantuan nature of its force. The frontline approaches the centre of the earthly constellation of stars, a fiery coalescence of flames that burn in defiance against the mockery of the clouds, but before the great showdown could take the stage, darkness returns with full force, once again dominating the view from the now frosted window, pods of sparkling silver writhing among what has become ostensibly the only constant that remains—this airborne ocean of midnight black.