Northern Lights (Patreon)

It was always a dream of Alex’s to see the northern lights; the rays of colorful lights that seemed so magical and unreal. The tigress had only seen them in movies previously and at one point even thought that they were a fictitious creation just to make movies look better. When she learned that they were real, she made it her goal to one day see them with her very own eyes and not through red, green, and blue pixels. Every winter, the young striped feline knelt down in front of her open bedroom window and looked up into the sky, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the phenomena would occur right over her house. It never did, but the disappointment that she felt each time never discouraged her from holding out hope. 

She did the same thing every day throughout many winters. However, as she got older, her interests shifted from spying on the sky to tennis, to boys. Eventually, northern lights were just a thing she was obsessed with as a kid and she never really spoke about it again. Her fascination with them was still in the back of her mind, but once you were an adult, there were just a lot of more important things to be thinking about. 

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“Alex, pass me the potatoes please?” said a tall and bulky tiger that was dressed in a fancy white button-up shirt. 

“Oh yeah, sure,” Alex replied and reached for the large bowl of mash to hand it to her cousin who sat directly across from her at the large dining table. It was the Marx family reunion, an annual thing where tigers and non-tigers who bared the Marx name through marriage came to hang out and catch up. It wasn’t Alex’s favorite thing to do in the world, but she was fond of a few of her relatives, so seeing them once a year wasn’t all that bad. Plus, if she were to no-show, she’d be getting an earful from both her parents, that was for sure. With her newfound fame in music, relatives who hated her before were actually somewhat nice to her now, which she wasn’t a fan of, but it was better than them continuing to be unpleasant. There was still the occasional sarcastic remark about how she was “spoiled” or that she was “forgetting where she came from”, but that was what families did, right? 

The tigress smiled as she handed over the bowl of mashed potatoes. She then went back to her own plate as she half-listened to all the different conversations that were going on all at once. The grilled beef, pasta salad, and mashed potatoes were comforting; every little bite she took reminded her of home-cooked meals she missed out on while being on the road. It was a nice contrast to GrubHub meals. She smiled as she chowed down on her food and was right mid-chew of a piece of grilled beef when she heard her name called out from the pile of conversation.

“Alex, remember when you used to wait at your window for those aurora lights in the sky?” Alex’s mom, an older tiger lady who shared a bit of a resemblance with her daughter (minus the long fangs) said as she pushed her glasses up and looked over at her daughter from the other end of the table. “She used to sit there by her bedroom window and look up at the sky, hoping that one day the northern lights would appear there.” Her mother chuckled a little, the rest of her relatives that were listening to the story her mother was telling glanced at Alex before they let out a collective “aw” followed by a bit of chuckling too. 

Alex stayed quiet for a few seconds before she defended her actions as a child. “You told me they were real; you didn’t tell me that they were only in the far north.” The tigress shook her head. 

“It was in the name, Alex! Northern!” her mouth let out another one of her hearty and warm chuckles. Her other relatives chuckled, too, but Alex didn’t hear them, she tuned out and was staring out of the window that was behind where her mom was sitting. It had been a while since she last thought about those pretty lights she was obsessed with as a kid and hearing her mother bring them up made her realize that she never did get to see them. She continued to stare blankly out the dark window behind her mom and at the sky, as her extended family chatted and ate, she was only snapped out of her daydreaming when her cousin asked her to pass the gravy for his potatoes next. 

“Here you go,” Alex handed over the bowl of gravy to her fellow tiger before she continued munching on her food and thinking about the northern lights and how she still really wanted to see them for herself. She had the time now that she was on a break from her work for the winter holidays and she definitely had the money to go wherever she wanted. After taking a couple more bites out of the food on her plate, she pulled her phone out and sent a text to her assistant, something she wasn’t quite used to doing just yet. 

‘Hey, Steph, I need you to look for tickets to Iceland for me.’

A few minutes after she sent her text, her phone buzzed with a reply. 

‘Of course! When do you want to leave?’ was the text she received. 

Alex pondered about the date for a few minutes and looked through the calendar app on her phone. When she figured out a good timeframe, she quickly typed up a reply and sent it over to her assistant before putting some more taters and gravy onto her plate. 

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Stephanie was great at her job. She had only asked Alex a few questions about the nature of the trip she wanted to go on and was able to book flights and draw out a recommended travel plan for the tigress to follow to find the northern lights. While it wasn’t guaranteed that she would see them, the duration of her trip allowed her higher chances, plus it was the right time of year when the night sky was darker, so they’d be more visible. That doll of an assistant of hers even booked the tigress in a business class ticket, remembering that one time she complained that the first-class experience was not worth the massive price difference between it and the business class cabin. With her bags packed and her travel plans in place, the tigress was off to the airport and boarding her flight to Iceland in no time. She was recognized upon boarding and the cabin crew was ecstatic to have her on board. This meant she was very well taken care of as she flew over Asia and the European continent. 

14 hours later, the Airbus A350 NEO landed at Reykjavik Airport and Alex made her way off the plane, through immigration, and into the airport where there was a dapperly-dressed white wolf waiting for her with a sign that read ‘Ms. Marx’. She rolled over to the man with her luggage and was escorted to a black Mercedes that then took her to a hotel that would serve as the place where she’d stay when she wasn’t driving and camping out in the wilderness. The first thing she did when she was in her hotel room was unpack her things to make herself at home, and once that was all done, she flopped down on the king-sized bed of her mini-suite and let out a sigh as she looked up at the ceiling. She had a whole month to explore what Iceland had to offer, but she wasn’t going to waste it sleeping, not even on the first day. Besides, it was mid-day, the best way for her to adjust to the new timezone would be to not sleep!

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It scared Alex a little bit that following the route that Google Maps was taking her on had her in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Everything was covered in snow, and the horizon ahead of her looked endless. 

“I swear to god if this takes me off a cliff,” the tigress grumbled to herself. As she approached the spot marked on the map where there was supposed to be something for her to see. 

“You have arrived,” announced the GPS voice, making Alex bring the SUV she was driving come to a complete stop. She put the vehicle in park and stepped outside of her car. Her heavy snow boots landed in the soft white snow and she slammed the door shut behind her. She walked around to the front of the car and looked around for a few seconds before she saw what it was her assistant had put into her agenda for her to look at. In the middle of all the white that surrounded her, there was a sign that read “DC-Place Wreck”. Opening her travel plans PDF on her phone, there was a little note that told her to either hike the rest of the way or take the ATV from the back of the SUV. 

The tigress zipped through the thin layer of snow that covered the designated path that led to the plane wreck. Ski goggles and helmet on, she was the prime example of ATV safety, that was for sure. It definitely wasn’t because she was afraid of ending up in an accident and on the front page of TMZ. As she zipped through the vast white wilderness, she smiled excitedly when she saw a vague shape ahead that she knew had to be this plane. When she arrived at the plane, she parked the ATV and hopped off to investigate it. It was an old US Air Force plane, with mostly the fuselage left. The tigress put her hands on her hips and nodded her head slowly before she grabbed her camera out of her backpack to take some pictures of herself with the plane. “Alright, this is pretty cool...” she admitted. After she investigated the plane more and took multiple pictures that she thought were cool, she hopped back onto her ATV and drove back in the direction of her rental car. 

She put the pedal to the metal and drove along the roads across the mostly snowy landscape of small hills and little towns. She followed the directions that her GPS gave her, she drove in silence for what felt like a very long time, the sky was even starting to lose sunlight already, even though it was still quite early in the afternoon. The Landrover SUV she drove rolled into small town after small town before she arrived at this specific small town. She spotted a small shop that sold essentials and decided to pull up into one of the parking spaces. She hopped out of her car, stuffed her hands into the pockets on her thick jacket, and went inside. 

She walked out of the store a few minutes later with food, snacks, drinks, and a few other things she thought might come in handy once she was set up for her night outdoors. She tossed the paper bags into the back seat and then got back into her car to drive the remaining 50 or so kilometers to where she was supposed to set up camp. 

The Landrover pulled up to a big empty area a few kilometers off the main road and the tiger parked it there. She hopped out and popped the truck open to grab the assortment of things, a large backpack, a set of skis, and an instant pop-up tent with anchoring wires to prevent it from being pushed around if there were to be any harsh weather during Alex’s few nights. She continued the rest of the way on foot, walking through some bit of pine forest before arriving at a nice secluded and empty spot situated right in the valley and surrounded by hills and mountains. It was quickly getting dark, so as to not waste any valuable sunlight, Alex quickly got to setting up her camp. 

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 “Ah. There we go… So that’s how you do it…” Alex chuckled to herself as she set her little chair up outside of her tent. The sun had fallen over the horizon a long time ago, but luckily for Alex, she packed a few lanterns and batteries for them. She hung the lantern on the back of her foldable chair she had struggled to set up just before and plopped her rear down onto it. 

“Hahhh…” she let out a sigh, leaned back into the chair, and looked up to the clear starry sky. Still no northern lights in sight. But the tiger had a propane tank out and coffee boiling on top of it, she was going to wait as long as it took. There was no way she wasn’t going to see them, even though she had a lot of days left still on her trip, she was determined that today was going to be the day. When steam started to rise out from the short spout of her coffee pot, Alex leaned forward to grab her red mug with one hand and the pot with the other. She poured herself a healthy amount of the black brew before she put the pot back on the propane, although she did turn down the heat to keep it at just the right temperature and not waste any gas. Alex didn’t realize how cold she was until she was able to feel the warmth from her mug transfer to her hands. She brought the mug to her lips and took small sips as her bright green eyes stared down the vast sky like she was having a staring contest with it. Her nose was a little bit stuffed from the cold so she had to breathe through her mouth. Puffs of steam left her lips as she did so and she tightened the scarf around her neck just a tad. 

“C’mon… I drove all this way… The least you could do is show me just a tiny bit…” she shakily grumbled to herself.

Seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into hours. While the caffeine in the coffee did help Alex’s eyes stay open for a little bit longer, it could only do so much. She checked her phone, which had just barely a bar of signal, it was almost an hour after midnight. The tigress let out a hefty sigh of disappointment as she continued to stare up at the starry night sky. 

She slouched against the back of her chair and started scrolling through the photos she took back in the city on her phone for a few minutes before she glanced at the sky one last time before she was going to head into her tent and sleep. She set her mug down on the ground and stood up in a stretch. Her eyes squinted shut as she stretched and yawned, and when she opened her eyes back up, she caught a glimpse of green in the otherwise dark night sky. 

There it was. A single squiggly ray of aurora in the night sky. The tigress’ eyes widened and she stood there staring in awe at that one beautiful floating ray of what looked like magic to her. She couldn’t believe it, finally, she was looking at one. 

“Haha! Oh my god… Oh my god! There it is!” she chirped excitedly. In her excitement at just one little worm of light, she ran off to her camera that was sat on a tripod a few feet in front of her and turned it on to let it start taking a timelapse. What she didn’t realize was there was a lot more happening in the sky behind her. When she backed away from her camera, she saw it. A sky full of stars and color, northern lights as far as the eye could see. Alex almost lost the strength in her knees as she stared at the sky all around her, her pupils dilated and she was like a kitten staring at Christmas lights. Feeling that she was going to collapse into the snow just from how stunned she was at everything, she made her way back to her chair and sat down. She poured herself more of the coffee from the pot and sat there gripping the cup in both hands, back straight, and eyes staring at the sky with little to no blinking. 

Green, pink, and blue… Simple colors, but they were so beautiful. It took a few minutes for the striped feline to calm down from the height of her excitement. The smartwatch she wore on her wrist notified her multiple times that her heart rate was unusually high, even after she sat down and became a little calmer. 

She took in deep breaths happy chuckle-sighs as she continued to look at the sky. She then realized that she should record herself for her friends and family and pulled her phone up to start recording her face. 

“Hey mom, dad, Steph, and everyone… I’m so happy right now, I’ve always wanted to see them as a kid… And now I have…” The tiger smiled and got a little teary-eyed. A little embarrassed, she turned her phone to have the camera face the sky where it could record the lights. “It’s the northern lights… It’s so beautiful… I feel like I’m dreaming…” After a few seconds of showing the lights as they swam through the sky, she turned the camera back on herself again and started to very ugly cry and laugh. 

“I’m so happy you have no idea…” 

She was the happiest she had ever been. Happier than ever.

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Art by Red3Engine