The night was a velvet quilt studded with stars, and in the midst, the milky skyline danced with the faint flicker of the northern lights. In the small cottage on the outskirts of town, in the upstairs loft of his bedroom, he was wrapped by the velvet quilt that was tonight.  Despite the aurora, the elusive beauty that was light in all that was dark, the boy slept.

Nevertheless, the peace that enveloped his lean body was the wildfire that burned underneath his fluttering eyelids. He dreamed, and this night, he dreamed of her. It was lucid, surreal; he laughed with drunken pleasure when she stumbled into his outstretched arms, but underneath the canopy of stars, she was no more than a wisp of smoke that faded upon touch. Then she reappeared; this time, her omnipresence was almost secured with a concrete edge.  The boy reached out for her hand, but his hand was suddenly the immovable stone, and hers was made from Parian marble. So, he just looked at her with a gaze that screamed a million unspoken realities. Nevertheless, he only said one.

“Please,” He begged.

“I’m sorry,” she said with such gentle assertiveness that seemed to close all realms of possibility.

“I’ll give you forever,” He begged once more.

“No, you can’t,” she replied with a trace of melancholy, “Forever is a promise that is given but not kept, and we cannot live in such white lies that define our existence…”

Then her edges faded, and so all that was pale,  pure, and beautiful about her faded with the darkness of the night.  A night that bled into dawn. A dawn that opened the boy’s fluttering eyelids.

Groggily, he awoke with a start, and immediately, he wished to return to his lucid dream - to the presence of the woman he loved. However, it was too late now, and with calm anguish, the boy recalled that she was traveling back to town because today was the day of her wedding; he was going to see her delicate frame held by the arms of another man. The mere thought clouded his vision with a veil of obscene hatred, and he vowed never to forgive the husband of the woman he loved.

Silently, the boy lit a cigarette, puffed smoke rings into the still air, and watched them disappear just like how he watched her fade; he watched the rings that resemble an angel’s halo fade: her halo. With a final blow, he snuffed it and went to his closet - where he got dressed in his finest suit. He got dressed for her and for the promise that he would be there for her wedding. The boy, although not a character of immense wit or strength, was a man of loyalty, so bound by such irrefutable conviction he drags himself downstairs.

Then he stopped.

He saw a letter near the front door of his humble abode.

And with a fiery intrigue, since no one ever wrote to him, he took another step down.

And another.

Until he practically ran down the remaining steps and held the letter in his hands - it was from her. Suddenly, a sickly feeling stabbed him in the gut, but it was soon overwhelmed by his trepidation. Delicately, he stroked the cursive that melted the dark ink into the parchment and tugged on the envelope until it came free…

Dear Mr. Tom Smith,

It is our duty as family members of Miss Aurora Young -

The boy’s eyes glazed. He shut them briefly, rubbed them, and opened them once more.

… that she suffered a terrible accident last night and passed away. We hereby regret to inform you, Aurora’s funeral will be today.

The boy stopped. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks in his hunched frame that became that of an older man’s.  He wept because of all the maybes that he never spent with her; he wept because he never told her that he loved her; he wept because he still loves her.

The boy took a paper napkin to wipe his tears but cried again when he realized that  the white of the napkin was the same silky white dress that would have adorned her marble skin today, the same marble skin he’ll never see again.

“Never, never, never…” The boy whispered to himself, and as much as he wanted to crumple in his unmade bed, he had a promise to keep. Amidst all that went wrong, he stepped out of his home. He saw the town, as simple and quiet and relaxed as ever, seemingly undisturbed by the death of his beloved. He shook his head again and choked on  his tears because he realized she would never again walk these streets again because she was dead.

By some miracle, the boy made it to the funeral, where many gathered to mourn. He wanted to see her again, albeit for one last time, so he pushed through the crowd and approached the coffin. But somebody had beaten him there.  The boy saw him, the man he vowed never to forget.

The man stood there, his eyes glazed over, head bent, shoulders hunched, his big hands holding a delicate yellow flower with white petals surrounding the middle. He was crying like a young child in a grown man’s body, crying because he had also lost her.

The boy was angry but couldn’t help but draw parallels between his wretched self and the man.

Silently, he walked over and stood next to him.

The man slowly raised his gaze, a look of helplessness in his eyes, “I couldn’t give her forever,” he croaked.

“No, you couldn’t,” the boy replied. He remembered his dream but didn’t want to  finish the sentence because sometimes, it’s better to live in the embrace of a white lie than

the truth. However, as he looked at the man, he realized he forgave him, not because she loved him, but because he loved her too. Softly, the boy wrapped his arm around the trembling shoulders of the man, and they stood like this, not speaking, perhaps for a long while, until the blinding twilight enveloped their subtle frames. A twilight that bleeds into the night.

Aurora’s night.