Silent Night

Sarah had insisted on the lights. He didn’t want to do them. They were stupid and silly and a waste of time, and he was so near, now. He knew it.

But she had insisted, and she had looked at him, and she had said “Seth, please?”, and he knew that he had not been kind to her, that he had stayed in his garage with his books and his cauldron and his ancient musty scrolls for many days and more nights, the long nights stretching out in front of him, and he had filled them with the work, because the work made sense and she did not.

She was warm and soft and needy, she always needed him, and he needed his work. He needed stillness. He needed silence. He needed to be alone.

She had stood there, the old cardboard box with “Christmas” written on the side in black marker on the floor next to her, and he had looked into her eyes and he had seen her need, naked and unashamed. So he had picked up the tangled lights and headed out into the still silent snow.

The lights were all colors, green and red and yellow and and orange and an icy blue. The blue was his favorite. He’d liked the way the snow crunched under his shoes, the way the blows of his hammer against the nails had rung out into the still cold air.

The lights hung, her need met, he had retreated again into his garage.

Night had fallen, long and empty. The frost on the windows obscured the view of the trees outside. The gloves he wore made his fingers clumsy, unwieldy, unable to separate the pages of the tome of the Great Work. But Sarah wanted him to wear the gloves, to take care of himself, to not catch his death of cold working all night in the uninsulated garage. He owed her that much.

Outside, beyond the frosted glass, the sky brightened. He had not slept in over twenty four hours. He had been working, struggling with the thick gloves, deciphering the alchemical symbols, trying different measurements. A quarter cup of ashes from a bonfire burned on Midsummer’s Day. Two pinches of unicorn dust, obtained from grinding down a unicorn horn. Ten slivers from the bark of a withered oak tree, rumored to be home to a dryad.

He had been working on this formula for months, never quite getting it right. The mixture had always revolted, had always sent up green bubbles that smelt of death when they burst, making him nauseous. Each time, though, he was a little closer. A little less wrong.

This time it stayed blue. He stirred, three times clockwise, five times counterclockwise, seven times clockwise, two times counterclockwise. The liquid stayed blue, and it did not send up green bubbles, and it did not smell of death. It smelled of meadows, of green grass and blue sky and yellow sun, of rainbows and frolicking unicorns.

His cheeks flushed. He breathed fast, one two one two, and he could feel his heart racing, pounding against the inside of his chest.

He’d done it. He’d done it.

He gripped the bottle carefully through the gloves. He lifted it up, stared at it, at the shining blue liquid that he had made, that was all his own. He’d done it.

Seth had created the Gotterdammerung.

——————————————————————————————-

Author’s note: This is a Christmas story meant as a gift to my friends, who gave me lots of awesome prompts. This is merely the beginning. 😉 Hopefully I will have the whole story done by mid January or so though.

I love you guys! Thank you, and Merry Christmas!