Sunrise

LegacyUser

The fog set in quickly. Within minutes, the harbour lighthouses disappeared
under a shroud of mist. Their horns came to life.
Ciarán stared at the pale orb in the sky, smiling as he realised it was actually the
sun blotted out.
While the boat was being tied up, he noticed the slates of ice still present at
midday; rebelling against the powerful sun, they refused to melt.
From the higher vantage point that his home-bound train offered, Ciarán could
see the frost-kissed masts of the larger yachts piercing the white opaque flood of fog.
The carriage was filled with Christmas shoppers and their haul of bags. The
journey was spent awkwardly shifting his gaze around, avoiding eye contact with the
other humans.
Greeted by the warm smell of wood ash as he came home, Ciarán wasted no
time in re-igniting its source. The logs glowed gently.
He switched on his stereo; the quiet, slow music soothed him. He lay back on
his sofa; it wasn't long until he dozed off.
A quick glance out the window confirmed that Ciarán had woken up to
darkness outside. Hailstones were pelting the glass like corn popping.
He had slept longer than he thought; it was three in the morning. For no particular reason, he
chose to go out for a stroll. Ciarán did this every now and again. There is something
otherworldly about walking around with nobody about. A secret known to those who
hide from sleep.
Cursing the street lighting on this moonless night, Ciarán appeared to shut off
the hailstones by closing his front door. The sharpness of the cold did not bother him,
he enjoyed the feeling. He wandered aimlessly around the locality, finding streets he
had never seen before.
It wasn't long before he came across the park. It wasn't very big, but it was full
of trees, leaves, and shadows. He lay down on the frozen ground and stargazed,
enjoying his blissful solitude.
This was soon perturbed. An intruder.
The sanctuary had been breached. She stumbled around, blind in the darkness.
Despite her disability, her gait carried a certain aggression towards him.
A weak light upon her face revealed a sallow woman. She shivered from her
long, wet hair. Her once magnificent golden clothes were torn, drenched, and dirty.
Ciarán was satisfied, seeing his old enemy as a vagabond in tatters. He taunted
her:
"What happened to your radiant looks, Liane?"
His smirk subsided when he heard her voice, raspy and lacklustre:
"I shall return"
He doubted the threat from an adversary he could barely recognise any more.
Ciarán, clearly unable to enjoy the rest of the night, returned home. Feeling
slightly spooked by his encounter, he retreated to bed and slept soundly. Next thing
he knew, he was staring at an alarm clock reading midday. This would maybe have
made sense, except for the fact that is was still dark out in his garden.
The clear sky was the perpetual dark blue of twilight. Ciarán noticed his fire had
almost completely extinguished. However, something caught his eye. He noticed an
aurora seeping out of the embers. All around his house, little faint streams of light
flowed together and out the crack under his door. Reaching out to touch one, Ciarán
could feel his hand warm up.
His curiosity very much piqued, Ciarán went outside to follow the pulsing flow
of these ribbons of light. His eyes were overwhelmed with an apocalyptic amount of
light. The details of the street were hard to make out, his field of vision was like an
overexposed photograph. One thing, however, was unmissable.
Down the gutters on both side of the road, hugging the pavement, was a thick
river made of what looked like gold lava. Out of every house on the street, tiny little
streams of light fed into the growing channel.
Ciarán followed the river downhill, keeping his distance because of the
unbearable heat coming off of it. By the time he got to the coast, he saw dozens of
others all going into the sea.
When he saw the steam coming out of the water, as the flows sunk to the
seabed, Ciarán realised with creeping horror what was happening. He raced as fast as
he could to the end of the pier. Gasping for breath, he looked east across the water to
where, yesterday, he did what he had to do. Even from where he stood, he could see
Liane, submerged, growing stronger and stronger. A ball of fire was slowly building
around her from all the underwater rivers of light. It gave her life, she inched her way
towards the surface.
Panicked, Ciarán ran back to shore. In a moment of desperate fear, he stopped a
car in traffic, yanked the driver out by the scruff of his neck and sped off. He drove as
fast and as far away as he could. In the rear-view mirror, he spotted a splash
on the horizon, and then Liane rose again, back to her former glory. He kept on
driving until he could no longer see her.
Ciarán thought he was safe until he saw her yet again. His enemy was now far
stronger than he ever was. He kept moving to the other side the world, just about
staying out of her way as she moved to catch up with him. In the end, they were both
doomed to chase each other around the world until the end of time.

Sarky

Bumping this because it slipped off page one before it was approved. Apologies to the OP.