IT HAD BEEN there all the time.
Like a mist creeping in from the sea. Watch it and it seemed still. Look away and another landmark had been swallowed up by the time one looked back again.
Truancy Mundane saw faces shining with light, heard tunes hummed by feather-light souls in the thralls of joy. Lemon Curl had closed up her tourists of doom stall down by the beach and ceased to scream. Even the beachcombers made merry over something unseen that had been lifted from their burdened shoulders by the blessings of an angel.
'We have a future,' they sang happily as they piled driftwood onto a raging fire that stank of burning seaweed. 'We have a home. Smells of seaweed but it's our home, our place as long as the world lasts.'
This last bit was like a punch to the stomach. For Truancy Mundane did not have a home unless one might look up at the stars above and consider that as a blanket of familiarity. For they were always there. The world might indeed end but the stars would not. They would simply gaze down upon a different scene as serenely as an eternal sigh.
'I will miss you Blushing Beauty,' she said fixing her gaze on a particular favourite known to others as the Dove Star among the myriad twinkling things above. 'Don't mind me though. Shine, little star, shine.'
Then she turned her attention to the glowing things that wandered the Face of the World, especially one particular spark drifting through thick clouds yet seemingly barely diminished in intensity with each passing shadow, so bright was the light.
'I must speak with her again, for I have found her secret,' she said and her eyes lifted up to the shadowy heights beyond the glare and colour of Cherryball Flats.