Sun poured out of her eyes, thick and gooey like marmalade. She smiled and drops of pure light dribbled into the upturned corners of her mouth. It tasted of grass, sugar, and oddly, horse hair. She wasn’t at all fazed by this though; frankly she’d been through enough eclipses to know that what was to come would be much worse.
Etienne had told her that in some places – far off scary places – there were people who actually preferred the taste of the darker, richer lunar silver. Marianne couldn’t think of anything worse, especially right at this minute, seconds before she would taste it. There was something so unnatural about the moon, the darkness.
It suffocated.
The sun was like a mouthful of fresh air, the moon was a wet tea towel pushed into your throat. It was torture, and unfortunately there was nothing the United Nations could do about it. Apparently God was outside their jurisdiction.
Her mouth was now full of sun, so that it poured out between the cracks in her teeth, and she remembered her father, her dear papa who would take her swimming and hiking and taught her hymns and how to love. He had been a short of stature, wide of shoulder and big on life.
And then he left her. She had expected him to be there for her always so when he wasn’t it rocked her and rolled her up into a quivering ball so that when the mortician came to take his chilled body away she was unable to hug him just one more time, unable to wrap her arms around his desiccated shoulders, despite the urgings of her wailing aunts.
She could taste iron, as though she had sucked on a paper cut and too late Marianne realised that the lunar was here and like an old time ship captain, she strapped herself to the mast of any good memory she could find, and prepared to ride it out.
She looked over at Etienne. His knuckles were white in his clenched fists.
Posted by dansimpson 
Fiction on Demand 