Aurora

Norway

Steaming south from Alta to Tromsø through still waters, the cloud came so low it touched the ripples of our wake. Everywhere was a shroud of fog into which the starlit night snuck the occasional peak. >>>>Aurora had wakened me gone-midnight. Bleary-eyed I had dragged on my salopettes and hefted my kit for the third time that night, climbing the five stories up to top deck. >>>>Skidding on the ice and snow, I made it to the darkest spot in the shadow of the smokestack, and mounted my camera on the cold metal of the tripod.

Norway

Staring resignedly into the mist and reluctantly pulling the fingers off my mitts, I texted my father, thinking he could be forgiven for bailing, only to spy him edging towards me across the icy deck, his fur hood round his head like a floppy halo.

We stood side by side and silent, allies in the minus-zero cold. Imperceptibly, the night began to clear, until unexpectedly there was nothing but stars and distant lights on a black horizon, below the shapes of white snow cliffs. Aurora told me we were in the gold pool of highest probability, inside an ocean of green possibility. The clear skies belied the sea of cloud she claimed hid her from the whole of the North.

At once and hardly at all, a long white streak dusted across the Milky Way, forming an arc from aft to fore and across the bow. Was it just the plume from the funnel? The sheer height and alluring longevity suggested not. Entranced we watched, as sugar icing turned to mint and a sky-wide curtain of falling frost flushed to a hint of crimson and a glow of ghostly emerald. Aurora had finally graced us with her presence and she had come to dance.

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