Goodnight, Little Light
A low hum came up through the cloud, like a bell ringing under a blanket. Ana pressed her palm flat and felt it buzz against her skin. River pressed his whiskers down beside her, and his long whiskers trembled. The hum was coming from the top of the stairs. Ana climbed. The steps were vapour, soft as warm bread, and they held her easily. River slid up beside her on his belly, one step, two steps, three. At the top, in a shallow dip in the cloud, lay a puddle of gold light, humming quietly to itself like something half asleep.
Ana knelt and put her fingers in. The light was warm, the way a stone is warm after a whole afternoon of sun. River rolled through it twice and came out gleaming along every wet whisker. When Ana lifted her cupped hands, the light poured between her fingers and ran back home. She laughed and did it again. The wind came by and stirred the puddle into slow rings. Then Ana noticed that the gold had crept toward the western edge of the step, and that it was thinner now, and longer, and going.
She built a little wall of cloud to keep it. The light went under the wall like water under a door. She tried again, lower down, and it slipped through that one too. So Ana stopped building. She sat with River at the edge and watched the gold stretch out thin as a thread, then thinner, following the sun down the long slope of the sky. It touched her knuckles on its way past. "Goodnight, little light," Ana said. "Come back tomorrow." River put one paw on her foot. The hum grew soft, and softer, and stopped.
They went down the stairs in the blue dusk. One cloud lantern was still awake near the bottom, holding a small ember the colour of the puddle. Ana curled on the step beside it, and River curled against her ribs, warm and heavy and breathing slow. Above them the high quiet settled like a blanket pulled up. Ana watched the ember shrink. "Goodnight, little light," she whispered. "Come back tomorrow." River's whiskers twitched once. The ember thinned to a thread, then to a spark, then to nothing at all, and the dark came in soft around the two of them.
