Excerpt: The Cunning Ether

Catherine was dead.
The train rumbled, steadily churning the ambiance in the train car, the silence he only perceived cut through his head, which had been haunted by an anguished crease for these past days. He licked his lips, pushing back tears. The rain pattered on the window, taunting his vulnerability. Thunder roared almost constantly, seemingly yelling it's disapproval at his depression. A wrinkled newspaper lay on the seat beside him, nearly untouched, rain spotted from it's brief stint through the torrent at the train station.
His hand was on his forehead, looking down onto the blur of the ground below the train, constantly distorted by the rain which had refused to cease for hours. The man's skin was tough and cold, almost bony, the grey light reflected from the window making a skull of his pained face.
His blue eyes were only just visible, as the man was wincing as he blinked back the tears which he was so reluctant to receive.
Catherine had not deserved her death, he knew that, and was only a far cry from screaming it back at the mocking thunder. Nothing was understood. She was gone. She was gone. He couldn't stop yelling it at himself, trying desperately to perceive the facts that he knew were staring him right in the face. They were facts. He knew that. They were beyond any preconceived notion of reasonable doubt, and Joss had only to understand that. He knew, he just knew, that if he was to just reach out and grasp the facts that were so close to him, that all of his pain would be gone. He clung to this idea.
The pain, he knew, would destroy him. Would break him. The deep burning ache in his stomach and chest, never leaving him. Was there any other outcome, other than more pain? He did not want to know.
The orange glowing electric lamp above the cabin flickered on, fighting against the grey blue light from the window. Fighting the sadness, Joss thought. Yes, it's fighting for me, was the only vague thought other than deep sadness that even occurred to Joss.
They had found nothing. The very thought sent him back through the endless questions which had plagued him for days. Why had this happened? How did the fire start?” “Where was Catherine when it happened?” And most importantly, and most painful to Joss, “Where was her body?”
To his general surprise and disturbance, the tears did not come. His eyes were clearly dry. One more question. “Why did he not cry for his wife?”
Now devoid of all thought, emptily staring out at the rain, his mind drifted back to the dream that he had felt long before the fire.
Athena glided through cloud, the burner on high, flames jutting into her grand envelope, a purple hue in the rising sun. She was carrying two passengers, looking out over the sky. Catherine and Joss, “Jossy”, as she called him, locked eyes, basking in the splendor of the open globe of cloud. Turning back towards the controls, Joss looked out over the basket’s edge. The misty clouds parted below them, and the sea, calm as it could get, reflected the balloon in the glaring, yellow-purple sun. Seabirds floated past in a perfect V formation, heading towards the light of dawn. Joss looked back up, beaming at Catherine, and she said but one word, “Beautiful.”
Joss awoke smiling contentedly, eyes suddenly dilating from the sun, which had bobbed back from behind the gray clouds. His smile faded as quickly as it had come, as he realized, absolutely horrified, that the paradise he had created for himself had vanished, and that the clouds and birds, Catherine, they were all actors in a mocking play that he himself had concocted.
Shockingly disappointed still, he came to find that the gorgeous scene in his head was slipping away. He wanted it to stay. To just cradle him in disbelief, in faith, that what he was seeing was as true as it could be.
He had fallen asleep on the window ledge, the raindrops blurred eye strainingly close. The sun had yet floated back through the hole in the thunderclouds, and the entirety of creation, it seemed, had been cloaked in blueish darkness once more.