Lights

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BOOK 8

This one is very short.

Halt stood on the balcony, staring out at the night. Below him, the houses were laced with christmas lights, lanterns of coloured glass that glowed with an eery light, yet somehow peaceful. The houses were barely perceptable in the dark, but Halt could see the lines of green, red and gold lights marking the streets.

It was a truly beautiful sight. In ways, he found it melancholy. Caitlyn used to love hanging lights up in Hibernia. It was strange to think of Caitlyn. He could see her face in his minds eye, her dark eyes glowing, her hair bouncing around her face.

But that wasn't what she looked like. For Caitlyn had grown up apart from her big brother. He had seen her occasionally, on his various trips to Hibernia, and on those times, she had been an adult. And yet, in his mind, she was always a young child.

She had died and he had attended her funeral in secret. It was sad to think he would never see her again. However, he had steeled himself to a future without her many years ago and the girl he had grown up with had died long berfore that.

How strange time was. You grew and aged, each passing year you are slightly different. Still, the lights are hung. Had Caitlyn hung lights when he left? Had she missed him? Would she have smiled if he went up to her and told her he was still alive?

He didn't know. Maybe he didn't care anymore.

"Halt," he felt Pauline move beside him and rest her slender arms on the railing. "You'll catch a cold if you stay out here," she said.

In a rare moment of affection, he wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him and he sighed softly, a white mist curling from his lips.

It was strange to think that if he could travel back in time and tell his younger self that one day he would live in Araluen, young Halt would have been sceptical. Back in those days, he would never have believed that he would age apart from his sister. He would meet a brother, a wife and a son. He would have close friends. He would be famous.

And Caitlyn would not know any of this.

"It's beautiful," Pauline said. "I can see why you like the view."

Halt bridled at this. No reason for his wife to believe him a sentimental old fool, he decided. "Not particularly," he said. "Let's go inside, I'm freezing."

And they entered the warmth of a home, shutting the door to the outside world, while above them that stars in the sky twinkled in their own christmas light display.

Sigh... I still don't have a chirstmas tree. I want a christmas tree, dammit! Stupid rain causing landslides and floods (not proper, death toll floods, just overflowing rivers) and closing the roads so the traffic is deadlocked and it would take two hours to get into town to get a christmas tree...!

Seriously, it took my dad an hour and a half to get to work, where usually it would take ten minutes.

But actually this was all yesterday and it's mostly fine today. I just wanted to get that off my chest. It was quite exciting for me! Our driveway was in ankledeep water, I thought it was cool.

As you can see, nothing much happens in my life. ^.^'