What Is It That You’re Hiding From?

This piece was inspired by a prompt from Original Worlds (Ira Robinson)

Does this painting tell a story?

Original painting by Original Worlds (Ira Robinson)

For those who were silenced, and for the voices that survived anyway.

Aurelia Noctis was bathing next to the lake.

She had half-formed wings, not fully angelic, not fully practical. Wings that suggested transcendence, but also the pain of trying to rise while carrying weight.

They shimmered in dark blues, bronze, and moonlight silver.

Before everything happened, her neck stood upright and her yellow eyes carried a spark that the Sun itself confessed it was jealous of.

“My hair used to be like yours,” she said as we introduced ourselves and sat down for a picnic.

“What made you decide to go with blue?” I asked as I bit harshly into the apple with a pink-red glow in my hand.

“Blue is my favourite colour,” she replied as she reached for those little sandwiches.

Oddly, knowing this woman’s favourite colour felt more important than knowing how I found myself sitting across from her.

“Blue is my favourite colour as well,” I replied to her as my lips curled upward, revealing my dimple.

I wish there were some blueberries.

“Here, have some,” she said, her arm reaching toward me, her fist full of blueberries.

My laughter broke.

“Gosh, I wish this was the real world,” I said as I threw myself on the grass, my face facing the sky.

“What makes it any less real?” she asked as she pulled her hair away from her shoulders, revealing her elf-like ears.

She was not beautiful. She was one of a kind.

“Why do you think I’m here?” I asked.

“You know the answer to that better than me,” she replied.

A thin ribbon of sunshine cut through the tree branches and burned inside my eye. My eyelids closed for a brief second to block the sun. When I opened them, I was lying in my bed in my pyjamas.

The next night, I went to bed earlier. Much earlier.

The forest...

The trees no longer had purple leaves. The sky looked the same, but there were no birds flying across it. Soil did not look nurturing. It looked intoxicating.

The silence cut through the liveliness of leaves that drifted from its branches, floating eloquently down the stream.

Aurelia Noctis!

Suddenly, a pair of deep amber-gold eyes, carrying both intelligence and sadness, appeared before me.

Her gaze looked different, like surviving inner winters but still looking toward dawn.

“Get out of here!” she whispered in one breath.

“What, what is going on?” I asked.

“They are here. Get out. Get away!”

“What are you tal…”

“They will come after you. They will track you down on Earth. If they see you, nowhere is safe.”

“What do they want?” I asked.

“My tongue,” she replied.

A small lantern, glowing softly, hung around her throat.

“What would they want from me?”

“Your tongue,” she replied.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They are The Shallows. They call my kind the Siren Lanterns, monstrous women, dangerous for our beauty and feared for our voices.”

“Where are the others?” I asked.

“They killed every one of our kind,” she replied.

“Our?”

She nodded.

“You have to go. Now!” she demanded.

“I can’t leave you alone,” I resisted.

Her elf-like ears tilted slightly upwards, as if they were pulled by a sound that I did not hear. Her nostrils grew larger while I stared at her. My mouth parted, but she pushed me towards the bushes.

I looked at her, my head tilted upward, my eyes pressing with curiosity.

Her lips parted, but no sound came from them.

K-E-E-P Q-U-I-E-T

She snapped her finger and the forest turned into a desert. Droughty, no water, no shade, no magic.

I heard distant whispers. Footsteps that weren’t mine. Heat coming from somewhere unseen.

I felt watched, though no one was there.

My stomach tightened and my hands curled into fists.

Suddenly, a group of men appeared out of nowhere, looking like stray drunkards.

“Where is she?” his lips moved, but his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. Somewhere buried deep in suppression. He had a crown-like elliptic shape over him.

He looked ridiculous.

“She is not here,” Aurelia Noctis replied.

“You never learn, do you?”

She hissed angrily through her teeth.

“You know he is after you, right?”

“He is not after me, he is after the truth that he wants to see. I know no truth like that,” she replied.

I was almost in a trance, compelled by her words.

Aurelia Noctis carried on.

“He is a coward,” she said, tilting her head to the right.

“Watch it,” the crowned drunkard replied.

“He fears my voice. Do you fear it too? You know what they say, it can kill you,” she said, showing her teeth while wearing an uncanny smile.

“Don’t listen to this monster!” he said, turning toward the other drunkards.

“She’ll destroy you if you listen.”

“My song doesn’t kill. It remembers. Tell me, what is it that made you undone? Incomplete?” she spoke.

The drunkard turned his gaze toward her. His eyes carried a flame like an ignited fire. The kind that burns quickly, ruining everything close enough, and then goes out as quickly as it started.

She started pacing her steps while she drew a circle around the drunkard.

The scenery tilted, as if the desert did not want to hold any longer.

“Perhaps the truth you escape, but pretend to seek?” Aurelia Noctis said like she was spitting.

Her gaze pierced the ridiculous crown-like figure on the drunkard’s head into ashes.

“I will end your life,” he said furiously.

“Then end it. She will spread the truth that no man bears to hear. You will never get her tongue,” she said.

“We will see about that,” the drunkard replied.

His arm rose, holding his sword. His chest pressed against his ribs in wanting.

“Any last words?”

The air carried a weightless hum.

A note resolved in me, carrying a low vibration that I didn’t know how to name.

Aurelia Noctis did not speak. She sang.

“I remember who you were before fear.

I see what you became to survive.
Your cage was decorated, not sacred.
You shall remain unseen until you look at the mirror, upright.
You think you’ve been seeking the truth, but you’ve been mistaken all along.

You’re seeking permission.
To rest. To belong.
To feel full without having to perform at all.

So, I’ll meet you, at every door you try to walk through,
in every mirror you avoid,
and ask, without mercy:

What is it that you’re hiding from?”

The leaves shifted toward me, the clouds pulled back, and the air leaned in like it was trying to listen, as if something had been waiting for her song to arrive.

Around her, the garden bloomed like a map of my life. Each flower a choice I had once made, each thorn a path I had feared to take.

Fear closed in when I thought I might never get back to the world I believed I belonged to. Then turned into relief that softened my chest.

His sword moved in sync with his arm, almost in slow motion. The blade touched her neck and everything froze.

Her neck was slightly tilted to the right. It looked like it could be snatched easily like a tree branch.

I woke up in my bed.

It felt like I had stepped sideways into a version of the world that had been running beside mine all along. Familiar enough to recognise, different enough to set itself apart from the one I knew.

A blinding light lifted the heavy air all at once. I started to breathe again, only realising I had stopped when the air shimmered and carried a scent I had never known. Colours bloomed like magic, following the darkness that almost swallowed my heart.

I lifted my head and within a second, I froze.

A reflection appeared in the mirror across from me. A recognition passed between me and Aurelia Noctis.

I opened my laptop and started my Substack.

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