#blue jane

The winner of round 10 are star wars: a New hope and brokeback mountain 🌄

for Brontë

Jane zigged and zagged along the pathways of sleep, shivering under the blankets despite the summer’s last days of warmth. Her fitfulness wouldn’t let her return to her dreams no matter how badly that place in her mind wanted to take her back there to see why the world beneath her had become dismal. She stirred now at every little sound, every shift of air, every change in temperature, every smell riding the thermals up to her bedroom. She saw her Dad sitting beside the bed two or three times through her sleep haze, always watching over her, protecting her while she slept, and seeing him would soothe her for a while, make her forget that her angry back was forcing her to toss and turn from her side to her belly to her side.

Many stirrings later, Jane realized her Dad was gone. Her Mom was standing in front of the chair where her Dad had been, and she looked like an angel. Not simply because her Mom still held the beauty that had been hers all her life, but because her head was silhouetted by the dawn pouring in the window behind her, creating an halo that glowed around the edges of her head even as it obscured her features in the shadow, and Jane, in her pain and fatigue and ill confusion, could have sworn that the halo wasn’t the only thing that marked her Mom as an angel. Jane could have sworn her Mom had glinting wings. The morning sun was reflecting off her Mom’s metallic wings, reflecting the light back off her shiny feathers and against the walls of Jane’s bedroom.

She closed her eyes for a second to let herself adjust and felt herself smiling despite the anguish that ran up and down her back. The thought that her Mom was an angel made her want to laugh out loud, and she wondered at the tricks the mind could play.