The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Nightlights
by D. Kai Wilson-Viola

It’s a tradition we engage in every year. The celebratory auroras, the shortest time in sunlight, the ribbons have a special significance and enfold us.
Inside our little town? We hibernate, then…an explosion of good fortune.
Visitors? They don’t really see anything unusual with the shutters going down. We close for a few days, working towards the prep for the ‘Nightlights’ festival. The mayor, who, this year at least, wears jocularity like a shadow – a tentative and sober face of our town since the viruses ravaged the world in the last three years – speaks tonight. We’ve been blessed with isolation. We are, after all, a sheltered headland community. Miles and miles of forest surround us on two and a half sides. The forest cuts off suddenly at the edge of an area near the back of my house, and the rest of the sundial scenery is cliffs, rocks… sea.
Our Nightlights festival used to be “loidhne teine” Idhteine, but the elders…they renamed it.
If visitors ask? Laughter, answers with no fear, that because it’s the shortest night of the year, and because we’re so surrounded by trees, and that sometimes, because of the weather, there are thunderstorms that follow an always dry season, and that we celebrate and decide what to do for the next year, based on how many fires there were, and that the shortest night of the year seems most appropriate. Not because it’s related with our ‘new normal’.
Our Nightlights though will be significant this year. Nine new homes were ‘converted’ briefly to places to stay. Staycations mean that we’ll have people with us – there’s no problem attracting new people.
Some say they never leave. I prefer the idea my momma told me, when she led the last group away.
“We’ll burn into fire, into the break, into the ribbons. We’ll touch back next year.”
They always do.

(loidhne teine – Scottish Gaelic direct translation of fire line – a deliberately cleared or gapped area to enclose or prevent the continuation of a fire).

Fiction © Copyright D. Kai Wilson-Viola
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

About Author D. Kai Wilson-Viola:

D Kai Wilson-Viola aka Kai, writes in all genres.  She’s currently gearing up to release her first true Crime book and website.  This piece is an offshoot of ‘The Rememberancers,’ which is up in the next batch of plans.
When not writing, she can be found gaming or taking photos with her family in the Cotswolds, where she lives.

Find D. Kai Wilson-Viola on Facebook!