The sky was a dwindling summer-scented candle burning around the fading waxy sun. It was scattered autumn leaves soaring in every whirl of wind. Baby’s breath clouds contrasted perfectly on the marigold backdrop, offset by lipstick-colored azaleas. Highlighter hues melted into one another like watercolors. Trees tinged with starlit sparkles framed the perfect view. I couldn’t help but see you and our memories here; the world fell away and the sun seemed to sink for us alone.

The awe and beauty of it all, the exploding horizon, the fields coated with history, the soft painted woodland, it was too much to take in and all at once would never be enough. I wanted to breathe the sunset, to inject it into my soul.

As the sky deepened with time, faint stars threw themselves across it, littering everything near it with glittering dust. Artemis looked down at us from her waning crescent, illuminating dew-stained leaves with milky mist. Crickets sang in their melodic first soprano, blending with the smooth, soulful baritone of the toads. Mushroom caps sprouted in faerie rings, promising a dark kind of joy. Eternal joy is death, but fleeting euphoria defies all terms of beauty.

The sun evanesced into fog that cloaked the landscape like a silk nightdress. Its time was transient yet its impact made itself known in the aureate streaks that still tainted a sky that approached obsidian. We watched stars traverse our ceiling carved from ebony, listened to the haunting midnight chorus, and felt shivers go down our backs in the glistening air of serenity. The impermanence was as enchanting as the rolling pine covered hills, and we kept the knowledge of the gorgeous disappearance sacred.

As the dawn of daybreak advanced relentlessly, the mist faded into dewdrops and the carnation sky bloomed with Apollo’s arrival. His radiance warmed everything it touched with a blinding glowing light. It lifted the earth and softened the trees’ leaves. There was virtue in all of it, from sunset to sunrise and back again, a loveliness and connection that only we seemed to see. A morality that we discovered through the sky’s phases, and the shadows of light it molds to near perfection.

And to think that it’s ours. To know that we belong to such a sensation and it belongs to us. Life is worth cherishing. It can be as fleeting as a sunset, so make it worth something to you.