Aberration

Aberration

By Genevieve Valentine

She’d seen the sun rise over the valley once. It hit the top of the mountains first in a line of gold, and crept over the fields in a dozen shades of green -there had been sheep, only a handful, someone had been careless and would lose them before the sun was fully up. Pines ringed them in now, a jagged mouth that case long shadows. At the edge of the green was the drop, and the lake underneath dare as a pool of oil.

The hill she stood on was clumps of heather that smelled rotten despite the dried out grass, and with every step she sun an inch as if the hill was going to give. There was a village at the bottom of the valley, just at the horizon, but no lights were on at all; she was the only one awake, watching the sun as the lake hid from it, as the sheep oved closer to the fall.

I want to keep this, she thought. There was no reason, there was never a reason to keep one thing that passed over another thing that passed, but this she loved more than she could remember loving anything. She was breathing just looking at it, hard enough that she could feel ribs.

She took a dozen pictures with the box camera she’d stolent from the city she’d walked away from, knowing none of them would hold this, knowing she was losing the moment when the heather looked alive with light. When the first two sheep fell she watched them go an had to sit down to keep from reaching forward over the edge of the drop to pull them back and try to catch it in the frame.

They made a noise as they fell, all of them, the same anguished cry that was more human than any sound a human made but she’s forgotten it. It was a long time ago, and there are no pictures.

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.

Aberration. Photo - Elena.