Geyser.

‘I want you here with me,’ I say. ‘I want you to see this.’

‘It’s too dark to see anything besides your beautiful face. Besides, we’re all settled in here and I start work tomorrow.’ His face is aglow in my screen, shining with different colours as he moves against the street in his background. ‘Get yourself on tomorrow’s flight and you’ll see us well before you land. This city is crazy bright, always moving.’

‘But this sky!’

‘The buildings are massive. If you look out the window from our apartment, you can’t even see the sky.’

I twirl my hair beside my face, a gesture that would ordinarily turn him on, borne from practicality this time. If he sees, he doesn’t say. The night’s ink whips round about me, glittered with stars and the merest hint of the aurora I had hoped to find. Or it could be my imagination willing it here.

‘I’ll organise a welcoming party at the airport. Matt and Raj, Krista, Pat. Me, of course…’ His voice rattles in my ear pods. ‘Ava, can you hear me?’

The wind picks up the mist from another putrid spout dashing from an unseen somewhere, thrusting particles of the rising steam at me in a tastable air. It is full of the sea and the land and threads of their stories. The next gust catches in my throat.

‘Ava?’

I gulp back my breath. ‘Yes?’

‘I don’t get a sense of how you are and I can hardly see a thing. Where are you?’ He speaks like he doesn’t know, but we had agreed on this time apart to think it through. Him and me.

‘In Iceland.’ That last night I found the ring in his jacket. We’d argued over soft furnishings, cats vs dogs, whether or not to have kids, and the right orientation to slice a potato for potatoes au Gratin.

That last night I found out he’d got a job in Amsterdam. He’d applied without saying.

“You can take your work anywhere,” he’d said. “This is my dream.” And when I told him I had dreams, he’d laughed.

I wanted to taste the world.

‘Yes, you are in Iceland.’ His voice brought me back. ‘But where? I can hardly hear you.’

‘It’s the wind.’ The rot and salt swirl round about me.

Yesterday I tried my first Hákarl. The bartender poured me shots of fire to chase it down. He dared me not to spit it out. Never again, I swore. He laughed and told me I’d be back.

Today I am filled with fond recollection. And I am wanting more.

‘Are you hiding something from me?’ A pause. ‘Or someone?’

‘There is no one else,’ I say.

‘Then why? What is it you’re doing?’

Now the ink above’s a stage: following the opening act of stars are gold scarves, green tresses, sheer sylphs dancing in organza dresses, glimmerings of light refracted from polychromed gems. But to tell him this is insufficient.

‘Getting perspective,’ I say and I turn my phone to share the view. ‘Check this out.’

‘Ava, darling, what is it? It’s too dark. I can’t see a thing.’ His reply is small. He’s so very far away. ‘Ava, are you there?’

I flatten myself to the decking and look up, taking in the whole of this night’s ephemera. I’ll send him a hundred wordless pictures. Then he might begin to understand. He might even choose to see my sky.

*

[feature image by Kristvin Gudmundsson]