Blog Post #9: La Vie En Rose

Lyra Banks stood outside the cave when Elwood emerged.

“Lyra?” Elwood asked “Where have you been?”

“The perasphere, fixing constace imbalances,” she said.

“What’s a perasphere?”

“A metaphysical place created by nocturnes,”

“Why were there so many constace imbalances?”

“They occur whenever there’s a spike in malicious thought or action. Murder takes the biggest toll on the constace, but the imbalances are mostly smoothed out now.”

“They won’t be like that for long,”

“What makes you say that?”
            “There’s a man without a name, who most people call Grim, who’s looking for me. When he finds me, he’s going to kill me.”

“I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Elwood saw his future quite clearly. He knew Grim was already here, because whenever Grim was around, Elwood had a gnawing feeling in his stomach, and the air around him felt thicker and darker. In a few hours, he would leave Lyra, go for a walk. He’d never visited the cutlery museum, so he’d stop by. There Grim would find him and shoot him.

“No, this is my fate,” he said.

Lyra looked down at the constellation tattoo on her arm.

“I’ve known my fate my whole life, all nocturnes do. I die on the eve of my 20^th birthday. Knowing this I escaped the perasphere, trying to run from fate. On my first night outside, someone somewhere was playing La Vie en Rose. It’s a song which means I’m looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. It reminded me of how our perspective on life can change our life. We can live in fear or sadness because of the over looming fate of death, or we can enjoy each moment as it comes. That in each second that passes, we get the privilege to be alive,”

As Lyra said those words, Elwood started to cry. Suddenly, Elwood didn’t want to leave this world. There was so much he wanted to learn, so much he wanted to do. He had missed out on life because he didn’t know how to live. Now he was going to miss out on the rest of his life. Lyra Banks stepped towards Elwood and enveloped him in a hug, letting him cry on her shoulder. And Elwood felt so much better to feel compassion from someone, he wished the moment could last forever.