As Sure As the Dawn
Cold.
Not the night, the pit of her stomach.
Dark.
Not the night, the gloom in her heart.
No moon, no stars, no wind, but an all-pervading chill. If a world had been unmade, or never made, or made and then left to immeasurable sorrow, Lucy thought it could not be as dismal as this. Deep and terrible was all the world around her as she and her sister crouched—or were they lying?—on the brink of endless despair. All their love and joy had shattered, broken into bright, lonesome pieces of glass at the twist of a baleful knife.
An age and a half passed. There were no stars to wheel in the heavens to mark time. An epic swung by unwritten. An era fell into the past; the two girls were caught in a moment of timelessness.
Yet time went on again. Out of the darkness crept a silver, weak gleam. Lucy narrowed her teary eyes against the glare: what was it? She felt as if she had seen this sort of thing once, once upon a very long time ago.
Dawn.
She wanted to cry again, only all her tears were used up. The dawn! How cruel of it to come when the Morning Star had been put out! As she clutched her sister's arm and moved stiffly toward the brink of deep night and shallow morn, she could only stare at that watery shimmer in the sky. Softly, a bird broke the silent air. A wind began to move again. Stop! Lucy wanted to scream. Stop! How can you all go on?
But it was she who stopped. A tremulous hope—one she hardly dared caress—sprang up like a candle in her breast, wavered, uncertain, and tried to grow. The world had not been unmade, when from the death of the Morning Star it should have. She held her breath, the tears on her face glimmering in the light. The certainty as the light began to gain strength, the sureness at the wind picked up speed, the bird its glorious song, they were timeless. They would always go on. And that meant…
The Morning Star rose. It flung back its huge golden mane and roared, and Lucy—cowering for joy in the onslaught of the power—was never certain if it was the dawn that roared, or if the Morning Star himself were the dawn. He came out of the gloom, the despair, like a shaft of light between the soaring trees. He came forth, all light and life flowing from him, never ceasing.
And Lucy, she never doubted after that. Come gloom and darkness, come tears and woe, she never forgot that singular roar, that timeless principle: he was always there, would always come, no matter the length or the depth of the dark.
His coming forth was as sure as the dawn.