All Things Must Pass

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky.

Rebecca dreamed of a world of eternal sunset. The time of day where every colour is saturated. Every ocean mirroring a sky so full of the richest hues, mimicking liquid gold. A world where horizons are ablaze with a constant firey glow, and clouds you could swear were made of pink cotton candy. You’d never be in need of that metaphorical pair of rose coloured glasses. Life would always be peachy.

As it was, all days turned to darkness. Rebecca stared out of the kitchen window and watched as the fire in the sky was dimmed by twilight and the cold blueness of night time.

As it was, this was when the creatures came out to play. Bats, raccoons, coyotes, yes. All of those. But those are not the creatures that kept Rebecca from sleeping. From dreaming sweet dreams of those dancing purple clouds. There were other creatures that lurked in the shadows and longed for the cover of night.

“What happens when all the lightbulbs burn out, Gran?”, Rebecca (or Becca, if she were to tell you her preference) asked, turning from her spot by the window to face her grandmother, who was keeping the flames in the fireplace at a white hot burn.

“Don’t worry about that, love” Gran said. “Fire has been our friend since the beginning of humankind. It’s a power that Mother Nature allowed us to harness a long time ago, to keep us safe and fed. It’s one power we’ll never lose or run out of. And aside from that,” Gran said, “we have back-ups of bulbs to last us years. This too shall pass. Now keep back from the window. It’s nearly full dark”.

17 year old Becca lived with her Gran in a bungalow style house, just outside of Calgary, Alberta, surrounded by rural farmland. They lived far enough away from the city that, on cloudless nights, the sky was a blanket of stars, full of constellations that city folk would never even know existed. Becca remembered being small and staying up past her bedtime to watch the stars, satellites and the occasional meteor from the bungalow’s back deck. But that was back when the dark was still safe.

The shadowlings first began to appear in the world when Becca was around 5 years old. At first, no one knew what they were. They began as a formless snap of a twig or rustle of leaves in the brush. As something you knew was there but couldn’t see. Over the years they would take the shape of a fuzzy silhouette against the hazy, bluish dusk, only occupying the space in one’s peripheral vision. As they were now, in Becca’s 17th year, you could spot them from their eyes, which reflected light like any nocturnal creature. The difference, however, between spotting a shadowling versus a raccoon or a deer for example, was that before any light touched a shadowling’s glowing eyes, they would take the shape of any everyday object. One might think they are looking at the silhouette of a bicycle leaning against a garage, a coil of garden hose left by the flower bed, a rack of drying laundry left out over night. A tractor. A watering can. One might even think they are simply seeing the shape of a familiar old tree stump, rooted in the ground for decades, attached with memories of being used as a makeshift stage for backyard performances. But as soon as a flashlight or the beam of headlights from a passing car washed over the familiar shape, flat, glowing eyes would stare back at you, like embers from a dying fire.

“Do you really think there will be a time in our lives when Shadowlings no longer exist?” Becca asked as she stood up to stand by her grandmother by the fireplace.

“Yes,” Gran answered. “There was a time without them once, there will be a time without them again. There’s always chaos before the calm. Like with Spring Cleaning, things always become messier before they get tidier. The world is just in a term of upheaval, but it’s what’s necessary in order for things to shift.”

Gran believed Shadowlings were the manifestation of all of the world’s worries. Of fear, confusion, loss, loneliness, anger and hate. “Eight billion people on this planet, all with some type of trauma in our past and our present, surely can generate enough energy to create such a dark force. These beings come out at night, because that’s when people are most alone with their thoughts. When we’re most vulnerable.”

That made sense to Becca. Night time was when she missed her deceased parents the most.

“I miss seeing stars.” Becca said, resting her cheek on Gran’s shoulder.

“ I know,” Gran said, patting the top of Becca’s head. “ This too shall pass. We will see the stars again. Until then, take comfort in every dawn, when the birds start singing. In every mid-day, when the sun is at it’s warmest. In every sunset, when the purple clouds dance in the blushing sky. Daylight is good at arriving at the right time. Let us not dwell in the moments just before the dark. Let us cherish every moment from the time the sun comes up. And someday, the only lights we see at night will be the lights of the stars, or the dimming embers of a bonfire, or the eyes of a grazing deer. All things must pass, and so too shall this fear of the shadows.”