A maiden blush

The darkness that greets you as you throw back the covers is par for the course. You squint at your clock, barely making out the hour hand pointing at the numerals: IV.

You remember going to bed at this time on some nights in your youth.

Your hands stumble as you pour the flask of tea and you narrowly miss scalding yourself. Contact lenses are clumsily inserted, backpack packed and you're out the door- racing to beat the approaching dawn.

Every robot is red though the streets are dead quiet. The rattling of your car bugs you.

Onto Kloof street and the road starts ascending up to the mountain. It's getting lighter now but you can't go too fast around the hairpin bends.

You're finally on the road that will take you there. You've done the winding drive before but usually when it's light.

The car in front of you has had no such experience. It crawls as if there were monsters around every bend. As if no one had taught him how to use the fourth gear. It's all you can do to keep yourself from speeding past him on the blind curve.

Finally you see the others. People gathered, staring. Pointing. You follow their fingers.

It's started and you're just in time. There she is. An improbably red orb glowing on the horizon, floating above a blanket of mist pulled over the sleeping city. Up here on Signal Hill in Cape Town the air is clear.

You watch the moon's perpetually pale face warm this one time to a maiden's blush. She must have been heavily provoked indeed.

It doesn't matter that you're sleepy. That there's no parking or that you've spilt half the tea in your backpack. Not till the unimaginably far-off year of 2015 will you see this again: the earth bending the rays of the sun to set fire to the moon as it is slowly eclipsed.

There's nothing like dying in a blaze of beauty.

Photo by Jason Visagie, News24 User