The Silver Patterns

Patterns of silvery star-like things were known to weave in front of Sara’s eyes. 
She knew, very well, the truth of what she saw.  But it was not that she saw them, but rather when.  For it was when she saw the patterned stars that for the briefest moment, she knew something of truth.
            The first time they came was when Sara happened upon a wounded swallow in aching, gasping, agony.  Sara did not know the cause of the bird’s pain, but as she bent over and saw the bird slip away into death, there were the silver patterns, winding small about the feathered creature and Sara thought, as their glow faded, that perhaps they carried with it the bird’s soul.
            Another time, under a full summer’s moon, she and a lover took an evening stroll.  What had begun as a walk, quickly become a dance, joyous and exuberant and filled with child-glee.  Then, too, the patterned silver had come, and wrapped around the pair in shiny glistening abundance, and filled her heart with joy.
            Still once more they had come, on a day when an ache had wrenched her heart for both no reason and yet all reason that took the breaths of her life and turned them to greying smoke.  For a time, she could breathe nothing but smog as she made her slow decent into darkness and shadow.  That was when she saw a single silver sliver.  She could almost reach it, almost touch it; and as she stretched, it broke.  A hundred new slivers like stars poured out of the one she held in her hand and lifted her out of the dark.
            Oh, yes.  Sara knew that the patterns of silver stars were real.  If only the whole of the world could see them…

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