She was beaming and bright. Casting her light across the sea in front of my house. Searching. Lifting swathes of it back up from the North Sea and dipping it in my hallway.
I was wandering around inside. Looking at her finely cut shadows, but more impressive was that she was managing to light the whole house up.
There are three windows that sit in the front of this house on the hill. I say house. But it is all on one level. All long and low and white. They are evenly spaced. Set into thick, stone built rooms. Opening up the lounge, bedroom and hall. To sea, sky and high. The sea and sky that provides a perpetual presence in front of me. Windowsills, big enough to curl up on a cushion in.
Walls and views strong enough to hold the waves of grief that still come. Roaring. Splashing at the cliffs below.
I keep wandering past these square portals. Peeping out. To the next one. And the next. Then to the kitchen. Which is tacked out the back with a red tin roof popped on the top.
Indecisive as to what was better……watching the moon doing her thing. Or the possibility of seeing her again.
I am sitting looking out the front room window now, between the words I type. Everything a calm milky blue. The line between cloud and water hazing, fading into one another.
But last night there were shafts of white light poking through rooms.
And things. The antlers on the bedroom wall and the cheese plant that sits on the middle window were casting brilliant shapes.
I was wondering whether she would return. I had seen her once before. Sitting on the pole that supports the washing line. Fat at the top with years of thin rope and twine, torn by the weather and repeatedly replaced.
I continued staring, at the now black line of the horizon. Scanning my manor. This piece of land that feels like it might be mine because I never see anybody else on it. I am starting to know it beneath my feet. All its different hues. I wonder about the hands that have tied all that twine. What winters here they endured. And where they are now.
My stare is interrupted.
She casts her head round to look at me for a moment. I drop the kettle chip that is between the bag and my mouth. She returns her gaze to what she probably feels is her line out back. Flicking those pointy little ears up she glides past the kitchen window. I place both hands on the kitchen counter. Cold and clean. Struck by the full glory of moonshine shimmering on the heath rush.
She lands expertly near where I dry my clothes. Neater than washing. And far more assured than me trying to peg out thoughts on a Caithness clifftop. The moon serenading her poise.
I am so delighted. Distracted in full from the froth and the foam below. No longer caught on the rocks. And I dance. Across the shadows and around glowing poles. Thinking about how one day the moon will celebrate me. And the grief I blew up the chimney.
Like heavenly smoke.
To play with the stars.
Pin pricks of light across my northern sky.