The Curtain

         They dragged the mattress out into the night, away from the cabin into the dark. The Alaskan family vacation, Jenny's last before she went away to college had not been her choice, not that she was good at making any choices right now, or even knowing what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. This is not the way she would have spent the last night of that vacation either, except her father was insistent on it. She would rather have been in Florida with her friends.

         Having reached a flat area, they rested the mattress and the family lay down - their heads and bodies fit on the mattress, legs off into the snow.

          Laying with the great bowl of the stars above them, so crisp in the cold air, Jenny's dad began pointing out some of the brighter stars and constellations, which was okay but started to pall after a while. Then it started.

          It began as a faint green thread in the sky which instantly transfixed Jenny's attention. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Her heart skipped as the thread grew into a shifting emerald curtain, giant overhead and continually changing into ever more beautiful patterns. Jenny could scarcely breath when the curtain faded some 20 minutes later and now the bowl of stars looked completely different to her. She had to grab hold of the mattress to stop the lurching feeling that she was going to fall upward into that immense void and never come back.

         Jenny now knew what she wanted - she needed to understand what she had just witnessed. She had to know that immensity of stars personally, to learn about them as much as she could, and perhaps one day to go there.