Emma OConnell

“Can you hear it?” she whispers.
I pause, ears straining, but all I hear are faint sounds from the city below and the constant draw of the waterfall at the base of the mountain.
“Hear what?”
And she smiles, through the tears dried on her cheeks, through the glassiness of her eyes. The sight is so damn beautiful that it’s hard to breathe.
“The sun,” Auren answers quietly, tone filled with a tentative, innocent joy. One that you’re afraid of saying too loud in case it breaks. “She’s singing to me.”
Emotion clogs in my throat as I watch her tip her head back again. Watch her eyes close. I draw a knuckle down her soft cheek. “And what does she sing, Goldfinch?” I murmur.
Her smile breaks through like the sunlight above us. “The song of home,” she says. “The sun is singing the song of home.”
My chest swells, and when she reaches a hand up and tugs at my arm, I lie back with her, situating until we’re arm to arm, leg to leg.
“Listen,” she whispers.
So I do. I thread my fingers through her own, and I listen.
But my song of home doesn’t come from the sun. Mine comes from her.”
― Raven Kennedy, Glow