Solstice-Noon

They say that if you walk the lake at noon on the summer solstice, it fills with light and colour. A local superstition found in no books but on everyone’s lips.

I walked the lake at solstice-noon. I gazed up at the blue sky and down at its liquid reflection. The ramshackle jetty beneath my feet juddered in the current.

I wondered at my own foolish fancies. Nobody else was here. Distantly, I saw a man walking his dog, his eyes on the ground and not the water.

And then the lights rose. Rainbow glimmers at first, then taking form. I saw tails and scales and gulping mouths. Spectral fish, joyously surfacing to bask in the sun, as translucent as mist.

My heart rose with them. I laughed aloud, wild with wonder.

And then, just as quickly as they had risen, they faded back into the deep.

Sometimes I still wonder if I imagined it. But I tell anyone who asks about the lights in the lake at solstice-noon.

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