Night Light by Virginia Hainsworth

It is night time in Krokom, a village in northern Sweden.  Minus 22 degrees.  I am standing outside and looking up into the sky.

What I can see takes my breath away.

The night sky has decided, on this rare evening, to dance.

Green swathes of what seems like fairy dust are sweeping backwards and forwards, and from left to right, becoming lighter in colour and then darker again.  Shards of pale green hang from the highest point in the sky down to the horizon, swaying like delicate silk curtains, moved by an unseen and unfelt breeze. It is utterly mesmerizing.

The sky is bathed in green crystals. I gaze up at the strands of phosphorescent light waltzing across their stage.  Shafts of light the colour of moss break free and chase each other across the darker green mantle, only to turn around and repeat their silent manoeuvres.

Huge bands of forest green move sedately, gliding diagonally across the firmament and then quicken, as if suddenly hurrying, turning to emerald on their journey.

The heavens are on fire but burning green instead of red, as the beautifully choreographed spectacle continues.  Time stands still.  Only the silent sky is moving.

I never knew there were so many shades of green.  Emerald.  Jade.  Sea-green.  And more.  As one band of fairy dust swoops down towards the horizon, another emerges from the left to take centre stage.  But only for an instant, as it too blows away across the sky, to be replaced by a stronger band of a different hue, then dying into the distance.

As one shaft of light swirls this way and that, another spins around and shimmers towards it, as if taunting it.  Like a swarm of tiny pine-green birds, each one individually unseen, but magnificent when flying together across the sky.

Each move is more stunning than the last.  No still or moving picture, no computer generated image, no brilliantly painted canvass or carefully designed fabric could ever match the glory of what I am witnessing.  I feel so small and insignificant under this exquisitely moving canopy.  And yet, at the same time, I feel hugely privileged, to think that what is an elusive phenomenon has chosen this one night on which to emerge from its shy retreat and perform.

How good it is to be alive.