Audra, In Part

The weather reflected in her soul impacting the color of her eyes. It was clear even through video calls. Part of him wondered if she was the daughter of mother nature, she didn’t after all ever know her mother. It was thoughts like this that filled Peter’s head in and out of sleep during the 5+ hour flight across country. The drive from the car rental place along the coast to her was filled with an audiobook. He wasn’t sure which one, though it had come from the list of recommendations she had sent him months ago. It was an interesting story but he couldn’t fully immerse himself in it between the GPS and his nerves. 

He was sure her eyes would be a cool, glacier blue today. Or at least if she was in the car with him now which, as he knew, was an impossibility. He still had a few hours to go, who knows how the skies would shift as he climbed up the coastline. 

Audra lived in an almost non-existent place it was so remote and desolate, but beautiful. That was how she had described it to him. It sounded magical, if not a little eerie. Peter would go anywhere for her. He knew it from their first conversation. The openness of which she shared herself with him. Different from how she had open up physically. 

Peter continued the drive, the directions and his thoughts about Audra interrupting the story. Someone had been murdered or maybe it was attempted murder, though Peter wasn’t sure who, and now someone, perhaps the next potential victim, was trying to solve it. It was the last one on his list from her. All of them had to do with murder and the last person you would suspect being the culprit. She had a mind for crime, they had joked; she loved true crime podcasts, horror and dark romance books. 

She was brilliant. It was all there in her eyes —the way the responded to passages brightly lit or opened wide. Peter knew other people had paid the subscription to watch her read, but he didn’t think they had ever seen her the way he did. His co-worker, and only friend, said she was probably acting. Then he watched her. Part of Peter had felt the hot pang of anger warm him while the other was comforted. She was peace and she shared that with her viewers. 

She was also his. 

Audra didn’t take private calls on her personal accounts, but she and Peter had connected. When the skies were cloudy and riddled with passing thunderstorms he assuaged her. Holding her steady as dark gray ravaged the horizon and her eyes. When there was a particular meaningful book or one that just hit her in the feels, a passage that reminder her of him, she would send it to him. Between the pages of her books she though of him. No one else. 

How he had come to be so lucky he wasn’t sure. Nor did he care. Now that he was finally going to see those beautiful eyes, that angelic soul, his Audra in person it didn’t matter. He just had to get there. Based on the directions he would be there within the hour. 

With every bend and following each turn, the landscape grew more unbelievable. He could see where she got the green in her eyes, the flecks of golden honey and woodgrain brown. The trees, the sweeping water, the dewy grass under a blanket of fog. Everything that was outside was reflected in her eyes. They were connected on a such a level unknown to Peter. Before Audra, he hand’t felt connected to anything and still that connection paled in comparison to her and her environment, even more between her and her books. 

It was with bated breath that Peter pulled up to the long driveway indicated by two short tracks of wrought iron fenced gates. Rusted, crumbling, and left wide open. It had to go for miles or at the very least take a sharp bend before a drop off. No where insight was any type of abode. There was the water out in the distance. High, flat rocks that made him feel he was in another time and place altogether. 

The aromas of the countryside came in through the vents, he could practically taste the water in the air, feel the crushed flower petals between his finger tips. It was alive, but still. The waves weren’t moving, not from here. Peter didn’t see any birds or four-legged critters. It was just him and the car bumping along the dirt path. 

It wasn’t a road. In no civilized country could he imagine this being a road. Still, he pushed ahead. His beloved was waiting for him. Most likely she was reading, for herself or in front of her subscribers, it didn’t matter. He would wait for her. 

He would do anything for her. 

Peter held the car steady as it nearly careened off the edge. He had been right, the path rambled out toward the edge. For a moment he thought about driving straight out to the water. The inaudible waves beckoning him by name. 

He didn’t. He worked the steering wheel to the right, navigating the random rocks and gatherings of vegetation, to start the decent. The way it cut in, out, and around the stone wall — once he drove through a gaping hole — made him feel as though he was going to drive over the edge. This time it wouldn’t be at the call of the water’s demands, but because the ground didn’t have enough width to hold all four tires. 

Yet, he drove. 

And drove

and drove

and drove. 

He continued on until the sun had sunk as low on the horizon as he had. Maybe it was a trick of the light, dipping into the water, or the darkness dripping off the overhead cliffs, it still felt as though Peter was driving down. Not flat or toward, not toward anything, just down. 

Further and 

further and

further down. 

Eventually he would have to hit sea level, flatten out. 

But he didn’t. 

His book had ended so long ago he had forgotten that he was ever listening to one. 

The sun teased him, running along side him in his decent to what had to be madness. 

When he couldn’t take any more, compelled to drive off the edge consequences and Audra be damned the path straightened out. One more bend, this one to the right, it opened up to a valley, low and flat. The water was visible in the distance, mirroring the dark grey sky above. The smell of death, of winter, came in through the vents. The air was cold, so cold he could feel the particles of ice forming in his nose and throat, feel the rough bark breaking and chipping in his hands. It had some kind of life force but it was dead still. 

Peter parked the car in front of a tiny cottage comprised of large stones and a very old, thatched roof. The kind that looked like winter homes for vermin of all kind. Peter killed the ignition and got out of the car. 

Another aroma permeated the air. One he hadn’t smelled before, but conjured frightening images. Ones that chilled him to the bone faster than the piercing air. 

How could someone so beautiful live in a place so devastating, he asked himself. Then he remembered, those sharp, clear eyes. Such a watery light blue they looked like circular ice cubes, the kind made for drinks and straws. Audra had read a book, one that cut her to her soul, she had said. She hadn’t finished it an hour when we started talking. She cried and wept. Storms raged in her irises. They passed and yet they stayed cold, wet, and weary for days. Then she started a new book and her eyes had warmed, brighter, fuller. 

Audra, he thought, meaning storm, tempest, noble strength. Did the weather reflect her eyes, impacted by the essence of her soul? 

The cold was settling into his bones. Long gone was the heat from the engine. The only thing that called to him, that sent a spark inside of him was her — the cottage called to him. He answered the call. Slowly, painfully taking each step. 

His Audra, the light and warmth of his light. His beacon. 

How she might live her he couldn’t know. 

But he would, he believed, once inside. 

Peter felt the ends of his eyelids sticking to each other, frosting over where his lashes touched. His field of vision narrowed until the cottage was all he could truly see. His mind was playing tricks on him. There was no overgrown figure in a shape reminiscent of a bell jar moving along the shadows. Just the gray winds pulling the dusting of snow through the air. No greenish form, old and rotted with limbs and vacuous eyes was following him. Just the trees swaying with the damped wind. 

There were no upper incisor teeth or black talons large and sharply pointed bearing down on him. The pain was frostbite. Large black pools of liquid sludged out in front of him. He had to keep moving. Just had to keep going. 

Audra. . .