the sisters


Short Stories / Sunday, October 7th, 2018

It was a strange sight, those three girls, only there was no one there to behold it – and if there had been, they probably would not have believed their eyes.

They were not visible to someone who would have walked down on the streets, out on an occasional midnight stroll; only if someone on the top floor of their house would have looked out at just the right moment, they would have seen the three girls hopping and skipping and flying over the houses of London.

And if someone would have opened their windows, they would even have caught the giggles and the singing brought to them by the wind, but as it were, on this starry night in December, no one saw the girls.

They were sisters and they were beautiful, all of them somewhat looking like the other but not quite. Their faces were soft and radiant, almost as if they were illuminated from within themselves, a strange aura resting on their shoulders and beaming from their brown skin. They were dressed in ball gowns, different colours for each of them; the youngest wore blue, the eldest wore yellow and the one in the middle wore green. The snow that had been falling for days now seemed not to be able to cling to them; it only landed on them, softly, softly, and then would melt without leaving a drop of water on their skin or gowns; almost as if they were impervious to it. Their voices were clear, resounding from the horizon each time they started a new carol.

It was December 24th and they had come to bring happiness to each and every home. Happiness, they’d learned early on, was not a tangible thing. Yet you could bring it in any form you liked; in a warm woollen coat to a beggar on the street, in a so-wished for model car for a little boy, in a thousand lovely ways that were tangible and then again, not at all. Through some chimneys, they dropped a tear each, for comfort and understanding; something cheap you’d say – something priceless, I’d say.

They were the sisters of mercy and they danced over the rooftops as if all the world (or all the rooftops) were their stage and as if no one was watching (which was the case) and their souls almost shone brighter than all the stars above their heads together.

And when dawn broke upon the horizon and the girls went from shadow and silhouette to figure and substance, they knew it was time for them to leave again. They’d done all they deemed possible to do in just one short night and they looked forward to doing it again, and again, and again, for all the years to come (and then one more, just to be sure).

 

Spreading happiness, they’d realized, was the best way to ensure their own.

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