Tête-à-tête

Darkness gradually conquers the landscape outside.  Soon, nearby details are barely discernible, sinking into an ocean of ink.  From time to time the lights of a passing village blink in the distance.

The low hum of the metal leviathan, within its dim cavity we are carried, nearly lulls me to sleep.  The lit dashboard at the front offers some reassurance. 

Across the narrow isle, a heavyset man beside a middle-aged woman.  White strands weave through her auburn hair.  Seated by the window, her face is turned toward him.  Eyes open wide.  Pale lips.  Her voice is low and slightly hoarse, and her speech is slow.  The words nearly get entangled in one another.  She weighs each one carefully as if not to trip. 

About her father she is talking.  In a village on the northern planes, where the land is vast and the intervening houses are few, he lives alone in an old house atop a hill.  During the long winters a thick layer of ice covers the ground, and smoke eddies out of his chimney into the grey skies.  

“He had built the house himself some fifty years back,” she carries on, the words now ease out of her mouth in a smoother flow. “And he says he shall remain there, come what may.”

From the corner of my eye I see her companion nodding.  The conversation lowers to a whisper, and I turn to look outside again.  Save for our dashboard and headlights, we are as if floating in an empty space made of solid blackness. 

Shouldn’t have we crossed through the big city by now?  Was our destination altered?  I haven’t seen any side-road signs in a while.  My eyes slowly shut by themselves, I doze off, and when I open them again, we are still immersed in darkness.   

Or is it the white of the icy northern-land that I see far on the horizon?