The Sunrise Glistened When We Met
Jonas hadn’t intended to be up before the sun. Some internal clock, misaligned by the strange new mattress and the unfamiliar quiet of the countryside, had jolted him awake. A faint, pearlescent glow seeped through the edges of the thin curtains. He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face, but the light was persistent, pulling at him. Resigned, he swung his legs out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans, and padded barefoot out of the small guest cabin.
The air was cool and damp, smelling of dew-wet grass and distant pines. He walked towards the bluff that overlooked the valley, a place he’d discovered the day before. The eastern horizon was a thin, electric line of violet, slowly bleeding upwards into a soft, bruised purple. He sat on a flat-topped boulder, the stone cold against his skin, and simply watched.
He wasn’t alone for long.
A soft crunch of footsteps on the gravel path made him turn. A woman stood there, her hands tucked into the pockets of a worn, oversized cardigan. Her dark hair was a messy tumble of curls, and her face, tilted towards the horizon, was filled with a quiet reverence. She hadn’t seemed to notice him.
Jonas felt like an intruder on a private moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. The sky was beginning its transformation. The violet deepened, then was suddenly slashed with strokes of incandescent orange and fiery rose. It was as if a painter had flung buckets of impossible color across a vast canvas. The clouds themselves became islands of gold, floating in a sea of pink.
“It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”
Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper, but it carried clearly in the still morning air. She turned to him then, and he saw her eyes were a warm, deep brown. A small, unforced smile touched her lips.
“That’s the word for it,” Jonas agreed, his own voice a little rough with sleep. “Brilliant.”
She moved to lean against a nearby pine, her gaze returning to the spectacle. “I try to see it every morning. It’s never the same twice. Some days it’s shy, all pale yellows and blues. And then some days...” She gestured with her chin towards the blazing sky. “Some days it decides to show off.”
The sun itself began to crest the distant hills, a sliver of pure, blinding light. The colors intensified for a breathtaking moment, the oranges burning into reds, the pinks turning to a rich, warm gold that spilled across the entire valley, chasing away the last of the shadows.
“I’m Carmen,” she said, finally looking away from the sky and offering him a proper smile. It transformed her face, making it open and bright.
“Jonas,” he replied, feeling the warmth of the new sun on his face. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You get used to it,” Carmen said, though her tone suggested she never really had. “But you never get tired of it.”
The sun was fully visible now, a perfect golden orb climbing into the vast, colorful sky. The world felt new, washed clean by the night and baptized in the brilliant light of dawn. Jonas looked from the sunrise to the woman beside him and felt a sense of peace settle over him, as warm and as welcome as the morning sun.
