She was young, but she should have known better. The days had been bright and hot, but tonight was cool. The sky was starless.

She waited until her family was asleep and then carefully went down stairs and out the door, pen and notebook, Bible, and discman in hand. Now it was just her and the night.

She was young, but not too young not to know.

The darkness was coming in. If she had had eyes to see, she would have seen it swirling slowly to her, like a haze drifting forward over the ocean. The darkness – the depth – was coming.

She was happy with her music and words she believed were true. She was happy writing worlds that no one else could see. Her eyes were nearsighted but sparkling. She was safe in all she did not know.

But she should have known.

She was happy and bright when darkness came to meet her, holding a silver platter of emotion, depth, fantasy, and everything heightened. She let fall to the ground her music, the words she thought were true, the words she had created herself.

She had liked the brightness and happiness had felt fine. But they had never drawn her in. They had never enticed her. They had never taken her higher than real-world reality. As they stood there with her in her calm, they could not compete with the radiance coming from the face of darkness:

Come with me to feel. Come with me to discover. You’ll see what you’ve already seen in the light, but the darkness will bring unreached depth, unseen visions, unfelt longings. The darkness is full of the unknown that you could know.

And so she went, shedding her happiness and brightness behind her like the transparent scales of a snake. She ran forward expectantly and with arms stretched wide to catch in them all the darkness she could.

Song: “Siren,” by Tori Amos