Lavender Full Moon: An Alternate Ending

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. They swirled together in a waltz that would make even the most heartless of beings breathless. Yet, it had no effect on the emptiness of my chest.

Being this far north of Ireland on the Summer Solstice allowed for the day to overtake the night in it’s brightness. It also happened to be the night of the full moon - the Strawberry Moon in theory. But in reality, the sky would not allow it to be anything other than a Lavender Moon. Soon the luminous circular goddess of the sky would overtake the pinky-purple that illuminated the vision before me. Yet, for this quiet moment the nocturnal sky was equal parts day and night, light and dark.

As I dipped my toes into the lapping ocean, I noticed the reflection of the lavender sky in it’s ripples. My breath came out slower and softer than before. The balance of these dualities had suddenly created a shift in me. A sense of serenity bloomed in my chest that had not existed for months, or years. My grief and the drive to make everything “normal” again constantly warred within my mind and heart. My soul invariably along for the ride. I continuously felt a restlessness of spirit that I’d never experienced before The Event. Nothing seemed to calm it.

Except for this sky, on this particular night.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Tipping my head back to stare at the magic above me, I questioned what I felt. In the weeks since I’d arrived on the small, quiet island I had stood on these same shores and stared into this same sky night after night without any sense of relief. I hadn’t wanted to make the nightly trek to the beach yet sometime before midnight, every night, my weary body would push me out of bed to walk the coastline.

Every night for a month I walked the shell-covered path in my bare feet, the silkiness of cool sand squishing between my toes. Every night I listened to the crashing of the waves on the otherwise silent shore. I breathed deep the salty, sticky air. I stared at the sky in front of me that seemed to swirl with magic and light in the same hypnotizing pattern.

These actions were supposed to help me through my nightly panic attacks. And while most of the time I was able to eventually fall asleep, it was not because I was calm or at peace. My body simply gave up the battle and allowed exhaustion to take her. It was a defense mechanism. My body was keeping me safe from my mind.

Tonight’s visit to the beach was different. I could feel it in the pulsing beneath my feet, in the sweet smell of the air and the taste of unseen honeysuckle on my tongue. As the moon began to shine brighter against the darkening backdrop, my knees buckled and my body gave way. I gently lowered myself onto the ground. Even my spine began to protest at holding up my trunk so I laid on my back, ebony hair spread over the pillow of sand beneath my head.

In another life, I would have been deeply agitated to be getting bits of sand in my newly washed hair and salty mist on my freshly scrubbed skin. But I was a different person than I was three years ago. What I’d been through changed me. It had changed everyone and everything.

The Event was something no one discussed. Possibly because there was no explanation, hence no reason for it to be discussed. Or maybe it was because the world governments had come together to unanimously issue a Law of Silence, on the chance that we drew that bad energy back. All we knew was one night we went to sleep, and the next morning more than half the world’s population had vanished.

They hadn’t died – they had disappeared.

My parents, siblings, fiancée – everyone I loved was gone, except for an aging aunt and a few neighbors and friends. Most of my friends had eventually left our town to live with what relatives they could find closer to the big cities. There were such widespread issues keeping supply chains going and hospitals and schools open, that rural and suburban areas were ultimately left to deteriorate on their own.

My elderly Aunt Rosaleen had given me the contact information of some long lost cousins in Ireland and encouraged me to get on the waitlist for flights so I could go find them. She constantly reminded me she wouldn’t be around for much longer, and then I’d be alone. But I had refused to leave her. The pool of our loved ones had dwindled to just two, so there was no way I would abandon her. I spent eighteen months commuting to my nursing job two hours away so I could have the money to take care of us both in our declining economy and society.

One Spring day during my third twelve hour shift in a row, I received an alert on my phone that my name was up next on the two-year flight waitlist. I was dumbstruck. I had never submitted my application to the FAA to get a flight to Ireland, yet there it was: an electronic ticket to Dublin slated to fly out May 3rd. I suddenly realized what she had done. I had raced home to find her lifeless, her favorite book in hand. While she was old and sick, I knew deep down that she had let go because she knew I wouldn’t willingly walk away.

Thus, the reason for my grief and hollowness of heart, regardless of being in the most beautiful country in the world. There was nothing to live for, yet I just wasn’t willing to die. Something in me pushed me day in and day out to continue eating, breathing, living.

Now that I felt the quiet calmness that this night brought me, I was reminded of nights past when this feeling was normal. When I spent hours wrapped in the arms of my future husband, Caden. When I went out for happy hours with my sisters to celebrate birthdays and jobs. When I attended a sunset yoga class with my roommate. Feeling loved and secure was actually normal at one point but it felt so distant that it really could have been a different life. It was a different life.

Flashes of my memories seemed to light up the now plum-colored sky. I couldn’t even produce tears at these bittersweet memories anymore. My well, and heart, had dried up. But I couldn’t rip my eyes away either.

As I laid emotionless in the sand, flashes of my past life zipping by, my eyelids finally grew heavy. I was drifting off to sleep when I heard a familiar voice call my name: “Rowan.”

“Caden?!” I yelled as I jumped to my feet, suddenly full of adrenaline.

Even as my body moved, my mind yelled at me to stop. This was insane. He’d been gone for three years, two months and three days. Everyone had. But my heart didn’t get the memo. It kept my physical momentum up and I was frantically running to the waterline, toward the dark figure I spotted there.

As I approached, I saw the limning that surrounded his body making him look Otherworldly. The sight finally had my legs slowing me down. If I was being honest, it scared me. I had been through too much. This was my mind finally fracturing. The trauma had been too intense; the loss too severe. I had to be suffering a mental break.

And yet, his smile was just as I remembered. The breeze carried his scent and it enveloped me as I took a step closer. That scent could not be replicated by memory, or an alien, or a phantom. It had to be him.

I took a leap of faith and ran to him as he opened his arms wide. The jolt of him actually catching me surprised me as much as if I’d landed in the cold ocean water.

“Caden?! How? I don’t understand,” I sobbed.

“I know you don’t. It’s a lot to unravel. But please just trust that I am really here and I’m taking you with us,” he responded.

“Taking me where? Where have you been?”

“You just need to trust that voice inside of you. The one that lead you to this island. The voice that had you walking on this beach every night until I could come for you.“ He looked deep into my eyes and I suddenly knew my heart and spirit had been leading me here, to this beach on this exact night. Even if I had thought they had withered away because of the harrowing past three years.

“Yes, take me with you,” I begged. I didn’t care where we went, as long as we were together and my heart was back beating in my body.

Caden picked me up and started to walk toward the dark ocean. As I let go of the last vestiges of my fear and heartbreak, the sky opened up and a bright purple light erupted, blinding me. I held onto his neck tightly but urged him to keep moving forward. “Let’s go,” I wept, completely overwhelmed by all that had happened and was happening.

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. They swirled together in a waltz that would make even the most heartless of beings breathless. As I sat on that beach, looking out at the ocean and the heavenly lavender skies above, my breath caught. My heart soared. In the arms of Caden, with the rest of our families and friends dancing around the fires behind us, drinking fairy wine and healthy as the day they were born in the Earthly Realm, I was finally at peace.

My life, our lives, were just beginning.