Lightstorm
Page 12
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Some immeasurable amount of time later, Jake sat exhausted with his legs draped across the helicopter seat, thinking about all the pints of Gatorade he had drunk during his Arizona years, when something unusual caught his attention. As he was fumbling around with his camera case strap and dwelling on the past, he noticed something glowing from the corner of his eye. He was oblivious to it at first—like the moon had finally risen over the horizon and was hardly worth scrambling to view—but as the ethereal glow got more intense, he noticed. When he looked up, he found a majority of the helicopter’s interior flooded with rhythmic color patterns.
He took one quick glance out the window to see what was causing it. As he stared through the snow-covered glass, he discovered fluctuating green and yellow lights waving ominously in the sky. Within moments red and white hues gradually added to the spectrum. The image sort of impressed him because he couldn’t see anything like that back home, but now that he was paying close attention, he realized he had already seen it every other night since coming to this freezing nightmare of a place, so it had gotten less impressive. There had been a number of occasions when he thought about taking a picture of the natural phenomenon, mostly to keep for his own personal photo collection, or to give it to Kate for her calendar. But, he just didn’t think he would appreciate it down the road, and Kate had already taken about ten pictures of it, so he really couldn’t develop enough nerve to take the shots. He went back to staring at his feet instead.