Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He was kind and pure and sensitive. I wanted him to heal from his brother’s death as much as I did from Poppy’s. I’d still only received breadcrumb details over his brother’s death. And that was absolutely fine. Due to the nature of Cillian’s death, I expected it was almost impossible to speak about without breaking.
Since we’d been in Norway, I’d sensed more of a change in Cael. I wasn’t sure we could do what we’d set out to do—to forget our grief for a little while. But we were trying, and I did feel lighter. Without grief’s heavy weight pressing down on my neck, I was able to look up and see the sky. See the stars, the sun, and the moon.
I was about to see the Northern Lights.
I’d had a one-to-one session with Leo yesterday. We’d talked about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). It wasn’t the first time I’d tried it. It was a way to reframe my thoughts. Turn them on their head to find a deeper meaning within them. Back in Georgia, Rob had tried it with me too. The difference here was that I was willing to try. Back home, I’d been a veritable statue, soul-trapped inside of my frozen body, unable to break free from grief’s ice-cold fists.
Here … my body had begun to thaw, allowing me to try. And I was trying. Here in Norway, I’d been trying more than ever. Rune had tried that approach with me too. That instead of being sad that Poppy wasn’t here with me, I should experience this for her—for us both.
It wasn’t simple, and it wasn’t easy. And if I let my guard down for as short a time as just a few minutes, sadness tried to crash against me with the force of a tidal wave. But I was fighting back, at least for now. I was embracing the brief reprieve of peace.
As I stared at Cael, sleep taking him to safety for a while, I hoped that was true for him too. I stared back out of the window again. All that greeted me was snow. Miles and miles of snow, nothing else in sight. The bus crunched on the ice beneath its tires, and I laid my head on Cael and let the smell of sea salt and fresh air dance around me.
If someone had told me several weeks ago that I’d be here right now, with a boy I liked, in Norway, about to see the northern lights, I would have thought they were lying.
But if life had taught me anything, it’s that it can change on a dime.
It was nice for the universe to show me that it wasn’t always for the worse.
The sun began to lower in the distance, and I could already see lark-natured stars waking and casting their brightness into the not-yet-dark sky. It was as though they wanted front seats to the show we were all about to see.
Stars … they would always remind me of Poppy. When she passed and I was searching for a meaning to her loss, or when the urge to see her again became so overwhelming, I searched for anything to carry a sign. The stars became that for me. Space was vast and mostly unknown. It made sense to me that Poppy could have become a star after she passed. She’d shone bright enough in life that she would blaze in the heavens. For months after her death, when the wound was raw and disabling, seeing the stars had always brought me a small amount of comfort. At night, I would trick myself into believing I was seeing her again in the sky. Some nights I wouldn’t let myself sleep until dawn broke and the stars had disappeared.
Just so she wouldn’t have been up there, all alone.
I was younger then. Maybe it had been a silly fantasy, a way to cope. But even now, at seventeen years old and almost four years into her absence, I still stared at the stars and missed her.
I’d once read a book on the aurora borealis. Why it happened and the many myths and beliefs different cultures had given for its existence. The one that was standing out to me right now was that it was ancestors stepping through the celestial veil, showing their loved ones they were okay. Deceased souls appearing to our eyes to reassure us they were still living, in some fashion.
At that thought, a dart of sadness hit against the protective bubble I’d created around myself, trying to break in. But I held strong and pushed it away.
Then I felt two squeezes of my hand.
I tilted my chin up and saw Cael’s sleepy eyes searching my face. I gave him a watery smile, and he kissed me on my head. Tucking back into the padding of his coat, I took solace in the quiet of the bus.