The sun fell into line of sight with their eyes, its low-angle light pure gold, coloring the canvas of the world the same in sky and off the undulant skin of the sea before setting away and the last of its colors filtered into calmer reds, oranges, and violets overhead that ceded into stars. The colors would come, but in the moment, the world was gold and fire.
He gazed at the light. He listened to the sounds of the world carrying through air that held the salt-scent of sea and tingled skin with the cool dampness of all the world’s tears a sky can bear without showing clouded sign.
He was enraptured in the moment. “This is what I want in life,” he spoke, “the meaningful, experiences that open us up; make us live, show, and share our honest selves and a true world. I believe that is part of our purpose in this life: to learn, grow, and give our true selves to others. When we do, we bring our one small piece nearer to alignment with something that is greater. When we share it with others, we become then light to guide others on in their way.
We don’t have to be perfect, but we are better when we’re real. It’s the only way we add light to the world. When less, we are only mirrors, moons reflecting from true suns.
I want to hold true friends that understand and accept me as I am, not a façade conforming to the conditionings of the world. How often do we get lost, shaping ourselves to be someone we were never meant to be, to follow a course we were never meant to travel? We are lost, without direction and sense, because it is not—and never was—the person or path whom we were meant to live. So much of our world is noise: distraction and misdirection from the truth we are meant to learn.”
“What is the truth?”
“God.”
The sky began its blush. Salmon spread beneath a band of gold that melded into orange, a hue of light as that cast in a wood-borne flame.
“I was lost for a long time,” he continued, “but then I was found. I felt something in my heart. I saw a Light in the world, and my world changed. I learned again to see my Light and then to let it show.
The world changes when we do, and it speaks to us in signs if souls remain open to receive.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do. I have witnessed. I’ve watched skies breathe with light, inhaling and exhaling glow with the rhythm of a living being, its clouds shift before the sun, casting shadow then illumination in answer to private wonderings prayed.
The universe has a spirit. God is alive, and we are a piece to Its wonder as much as anything else in Its infinite. God answers, responds—blesses and curses—because we are of the same spirit, if we only allow ourselves to become.”
The sun finalized it’s set. Its round orb melted flat across the horizon. Its gold fire deepened to red-orange light burning over the line of pale sand beach and thin wisped grasses of the dunes. Its light breathed in force, two faint heaves, perceived but unmentioned by either bearing witness, before disappearing to the far side of the world.