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She gave up on sleep, and sat up. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning. With a sigh, she got out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen.

She always seemed to wake up at the same time, and had learnt from experience that there was no point simply lying there staring at the ceiling, so she had taken to getting up and drinking chamomile tea.

She didn’t bother with the lights on the way downstairs. She knew the house like the back of her hand. She hated that moment when you get up in the dark, switch a light on and stand helplessly blinking until your eyes adjust, so she went without lights. In the kitchen, she had set up a small lamp with a dim bulb, just for this purpose. It shed enough light to make a cup of tea without risk of scalding, without being too bright for this dark hour.

She took her tea into the sitting room, and settled into a comfortable armchair. There, in the darkness, she drank her tea and gazed calmly out of the window.

Once, she had found the darkness depressing. The hour at which she awoke seemed to be a curse; forcing her to experience fear and anxiety on a greater scale than was possible in the light. She had spent countless nights staring into darkness, her mind dwelling on all the problems of her life as if the darkest of demons were pressing against her.

But then, one night, she had got up, just like this. She had sat in the sitting room, looking out of the window, and she had seen the sun rise.

At that moment, she had experienced an epiphany. She knew, almost as if she had been there, that Pandora had opened her box in that darkest hour; that this was why fear, pain and anxiety were so heightened in the night.

And just as surely, she knew that the last thing from the box would always follow after; that hope would always come with the dawn.

© Kari Fay

(Author’s Note: As an experiment, I have signed up for an Audioboo account and recorded myself reading this story… You can listen to it here– but please remember, it was recorded on a rather cheap gaming headset microphone so the sound quality isn’t great!)