Here

The sun was setting bluely, casting shadows over the mountains, the thin clouds twisted like snakes above their peaks. The sky looked frozen and icy, like the inside of a freezer. Headlights twinkled by as cars passed. Madeline sat peering out the window in her bedroom, where she lay wrapped in soft fleece, burning a cinnamon scented candle and listening to a broken-hearted soul-singer on her stereo.

Staring.

She just sat staring out past the glass and past the blues, past the shadows. She felt the frost of loneliness bite at her feet, and unaware, she began slowly rubbing them together. Her heart beat slow and faintly, like a dying clock. She could feel it ticking with each revolution of the earth. Her blood, tenacious and red, streamed through tight canals and fell into the mysterious dark ocean of her heart. She felt time pass over her, creating waves, changing tides. Her mood was her moon; orbiting; pulling; exerting its gravity on her. The cold night - a mirror for her mind - was still and quiet, ungrasping. There was lightness in her limbs. She felt her fingers becoming zephyrs.

The music sailed like a ship on the red sea to her heart, bobbing and buoyant. With eyes like lighthouses she stabbed out at the darkness looking for the glint of truth's amity. Her long extended breaths became a wind making snow angels in its sails. A feeling of connectedness washed over her and her feet felt warm.

---------

Jane, familiar with the mythology, knew what an Incubus was. But...she wasn't asleep. She looked back at the sheep and noticed the sign around its neck said "here." What's here, she thought. You, the wooly ungulate said, again without speaking. This wasn't happening. It wasn't real. What's real, asked the curly-haired ruminant with unmoving lips. Frustrated by the sheep's equivocation, Jane stood up and brushed the dirt off of her dress. She saw a splinter stuck in the bend of her arm and pulled it out with a cry. Behind the lamb, close to the horizon, the two moons had intersected, creating a pale blue eclipse. The moon furthest from her was colored a milky sapphire. As she looked to the sky she found it like water, except murky and crimson. It undulated and rippled and its pink clouds moved like the crests of waves. It was as though someone were actively painting it different shades of red. Why was the sky like that?

The sheep began moving away from her down the rusty dirt-road, a lantern around its neck. Some yards ahead the sheep stopped and turned its head as if to say follow, without saying follow. Jane began walking after the sheep, thinking the sheep less like a lamb and more like a shepherd.