12/04/2022
Emilia's by RA Wright is available now in kindle format https://www.amazon.com/Emilias-R-Wright-ebook/dp/B09SYFJ2RQ/
At smashwords in epub https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1130804
And in paperback here: https://lmefpress.com/catalogue/
Read a snippit below:
Hanna sat on a cheap plastic chair, on the small, tiled area that spread out from her back door. With a glass of a local Gewürztraminer in her hand, she marvelled at the myriad stars above that outshone even the clearest Auckland night. Matty had loved the stars. To Hanna, Orion was just a bunch of dots in the sky, but Matty had viewed them like he had deciphered all their mysteries. With Matty, Hanna had almost been able to understand why ancient civilisations had revered those collections of dots. It was because of Matty that she could find Orion in the Summer sky. Looking up now, she found those dots again. The Greek hunter with loyal Sirius always nearby.
She hadn’t searched the heavens for those familiar stars last year. She hadn’t looked up once. Hanna had always believed the stars to be eternal, but after watching Matty fight for just one more chance at life, nothing felt eternal anymore. There was no such thing as forever. Always, a word she had clung to like a child with a blankie, became a maybe, and one by one, like the sky had fallen, the stars had gone out. Fathomless darkness stretching out around her, above her, inside her - that was what night was like after she lost Matty. The world collapsed, turned in on itself, and hope burned away. The glowing tails of comets fizzed and went out like dud fireworks. Any sparks that remained were consumed by the massive black hole left behind by Matty’s death.
Months after his death, once her hands stopped shaking, once her knees gained stability, once she opened her eyes and allowed people in, when she looked around again and looked up, she was surprised to find the world was still intact. Different, perhaps, but the sky still hung above her, and the ground was firm beneath her feet. The lights came back. One by one. The stars returned.
On the hard chair, the night cooling around her, Hanna swallowed the last of her wine and tipped her head back once more to search the sky above. The alcohol burned down her oesophagus, briefly warming her. Perhaps the stars had never really gone, perhaps they would always be there, always had been, but, in a world without Matty, there was one thing Hanna swore had changed: the stars of Orion no longer burned as bright.
EMILIA’S by R.A Wright Fathomless darkness stretching out around her, above her, inside her – that was what night was like after she lost Matty. The world collapsed, turned in on itself…
