#blindinglight

What an eventful past few days it had been. Between the merriment of the event that was thrown and the downwards spiral of the energy as the winner of the sword fighting competition had been run through, Aurora had not figured out if she enjoyed herself or not. But the violence that plagued the town, be it days ago or years ago, had never really dampened the woman’s spirits. People live. People hurt. People die. It was the natural order. Life and death. And while she understood why people worried, their feelings getting the better of them, but she couldn’t help but wonder, if only for a few brief moments, why death was so feared when there were multiple afterlives. Heaven. Hell. Elysium. Hades. Valhalla. Niflheim. Sheol. Avalon. The Underworld. Reincarnation. So many places to explore and things to experience. Would it be so bad to die in the end? In the titan’s mind, no.

It was no wonder these thoughts had been spinning her head as she finally connects both her thoughts and the book she has splayed out of the table she was currently sitting at. The library was quiet. Very few people had wandered into it since the schools had been let out. Those that enjoyed the quiet, coolness of the building often found that she was almost a resident in the building. Knowledge was something everyone needed, in her opinion, despite an apparently lack of it as the generations passed. It was something that had to be earned, not given. And as time passed, she could see how life had gotten easier to live and with that ease came a mental lethargy. It was why she had chosen to teach. To let generations to come that knowledge came with benefits that no ‘life-hack’, as the children were prone to calling them, could never replace.

Aurora blinks at the sudden shadow on the pages she read, peering up with a smile on her face as fingers pull at the bookmark that rested on the table next to the book, sliding it into its spine and closing the cover of the book, aptly titled ‘Death and the Afterlife.’ “Hello, anything I can help you with?”

Owen had been a bit more reclusive of late in the town. He spent time with his family and preferred to be sure they were safe rather than move about the town. After what happened with Paige and Ophelia at the Ice Palace he just couldn’t stop worrying. None of them were safe and he knew why. Well... he knew most of the why. It was the what that was the real issue. He’d done as much research as he could, but he was finding nothing. The witches at the little shop had not been able to shed any light on Nordic witch craft, though he wasn’t even sure it was Nordic. All he knew was that he’d ventured that far to find the keeper of the medallion. He had assumed given that most don’t stray from the magics taught to them that that was what the medallion had hosted. 

Sadly, in the little town he called home, there was very few that even knew the difference between Celtic and Nordic witch craft, him being one of them. He was not a witch. He had never been one. He knew not of what he was looking for and so he had settled to searching the library for anything that could constitute Nordic history, hoping to find even a bread crumb he could follow. He had not found anything. 

“My apologies,” he said looking up from the book he read. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He’d come to an abrupt stop in his reading when he read of the Norse mythology and of their heaven and hell. He had not realized that in doing so he would disturb the blonde at the table.

Josh Hutcherson was mesmerized by the surreal 16-bit blinding light captured on his DSLR camera using a macro lens. The art piece, inspired by Yoko Ono, evoked a sense of nostalgia and wonder. As he snapped the photo, Hutcherson couldn’t help but whistle in amazement.