A Vision Occasioned by the Movement of Celestial Bodies

There was a solar eclipse in North America today. It was a partial eclipse - the ring of fire type - which I mention both for posterity and because the effect is related to the thoughts I had while viewing it. I happen to live in one of the best cities for viewing it, and the building in which I live has a beautiful courtyard that made perfect viewing for it. My wife and I joined several neighbors in watching it in that very courtyard. While the others stared at the Sun for most of the duration - in stark disobedience to the warnings on the glasses we had - I looked behind at the sky and the garden in the courtyard.

Regular readers of this blog will know of my great affection for the works of Clark Ashton Smith, particularly his Zothique cycle. I'm also a great fan of Jack Vance's Dying Earth, probably to no one's surprise.* In their descriptions of the last days of Earth they describe how the dimming Sun sits in a sky of deep cerulean blue and that all the colors and shadows are somehow more lush and beautiful in that final, fleeting time.

And that's what I saw - the deep blue sky, a hue I'd never seen before. The courtyard with its magnolia trees bathing in it in shadow - cast somehow as though it was lunar midnight but with the vibrant colors of noon. The bricks were redder. The pale stone of the statues whiter. The leaves on the trees darker but with the vibrancy of summer even in October. It was as though I could see Mazirian's garden or the shadowed palace of Adompha, right here in southern Texas.

Then 20 minutes later it was gone. As fleeting and fragile as the Earth in those stories. The beauty of the thing more precious for its impermanence.

*Especially since it is one of the primary influences on one of my current campaigns.