The November project 2019, part 5

I shouldn’t be awake right now. Should have fallen asleep a long time ago. I don’t know what time it is, there are no analogue clocks in this room. No digital ones either for that matter, except my cellphone’s, but I resist the temptation to check it. I don’t want to know what time it is. I already know it’s too late.    It’s a starry night, and a full moon too. The walls here are thick and at the window in the wall, the sill is deep. Perfect for sitting in. There is another window in here, in the angled ceiling. It’s through that window the moonlight hits, and if I sit turned facing it, my view is perfect. Really, what are the odds for that?    This whole thing is magical somehow. As if this is a night when witches party with the devil, or fairies dance across the meadows, house elves gather and determine the fate of the farm, the animals in the forest act like they Know Something. I can’t determine if the energy is good or evil, it only feels deceptively calm. The snow glitters out there and makes everything seem so still, but something is lurking. Something is about to happen. Maybe that’s why I’m not sleeping. Maybe it’s nature’s will for me to be awake. Sleep is in any case something I can’t do right now. I’m not even tired.    I jump down for a while, walk over to the bookcase. Looking among old books, folders, piles of paper. I know I have them here somewhere, mom hasn’t cleaned anything out since last time I was here. There! Second shelf from the bottom, in the middle.    I move on to the desk. I know nana’s pen is in the first drawer, in a little box. Nana’s pen is actually mine; it was a present from her when I graduated, but it’s always her I think about when I use it. She hadn’t just seen a nice pen in a bookstore somewhere, this was an old pen she’d used for a long time herself. Bought on a trip a long time ago. She wanted me to use it as much as she had, but the pen felt to sacred for me to do such a thing. I couldn’t shoulder that responsibility. With me the pen gets to be a souvenir, a family treasure, like the pens’ equivalent to the nice china.    A book will work as underlay. I climb back into the window. I don’t want to turn on any lights, the light of the moon and night will have to do. The papers still carry a faint scent of old lady perfume, almost dusty scents of flowers I can’t distinguish. I rest the book and papers against my thighs, take the lid off the pen, and write. A letter for nana. A letter about the fairies, the witches, the frost, the glitter. About elves and trolls, about roe deer and hares, about bears and moose. About how I understand where Viktor Rydberg gets his inspiration. A letter about everything beautiful and mystical. And a finish, about how we’ll see each other when it’s my turn. pen