The Amber Disc

My final semester at Hollowbrook University was a blur of sleepless nights and half-finished essays. I’d been dating Elias for almost a year by then, and we’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm: late-night study sessions in the library, cheap coffee from the vending machine, and tangled limbs in my cramped dorm room. But that particular night, something shifted. I lay beside him, his arm draped over my waist, his breath slow and even against my neck. The usual hum of the radiator and the distant sirens faded into a warm, honeyed silence. It felt like the room itself was breathing, every shadow soft and inviting. I was on the edge of sleep when a light appeared at the foot of the bed.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the streetlamp filtering through the blinds. But it was too round, too perfect, about the size of a dinner plate, hovering a few inches above the floor. It pulsed gently, like a heartbeat made of amber. I didn’t feel afraid. If anything, I felt a surge of tenderness, as if the light recognized me and I it. It drifted toward us, unhurried, and came to rest just above our chests. I watched, mesmerized, as it sank into Elias’s chest and then mine, or maybe it dissolved into the air between us. Either way, it was gone. I blinked, and the room felt ordinary again, the hum of the radiator back, the sirens now faint. I didn’t tell Elias until morning, over burnt toast. He looked at me with a strange intensity and said, ‘We had a light child.’ I laughed, but deep down, I knew he was serious.

We graduated, moved in together, and got jobs in the city. Life became a series of small responsibilities: bills, commuting, grocery runs. I thought about that night less and less, filing it away as a strange but beautiful memory. But Elias changed. He became obsessed with the idea of a ‘radiant child,’ reading obscure books on metaphysics and energy, filling journals with sketches of spiraling lights. I tried to ignore it, chalking it up to his artistic side. But then the dreams started. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, convinced there was a faint glow in the corner of the room, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Elias would be sitting up in bed, staring at the same spot, and when I asked what he saw, he’d just whisper, ‘It’s here.’

I buried myself in my work, designing marketing campaigns for a cosmetics company, trying to find order in color palettes and font choices. But the chaos inside me grew. I’d snap at Elias for leaving his books on the kitchen table, or for humming too loud. One Friday, after a particularly grueling week, I came home with a manic energy I couldn’t shake. I tore everything off the bookshelves, pulled posters off the walls, and dragged it all into a pile in the living room. I blasted electronic music from my laptop, letting the bass thrum through my bones. I was in the middle of rearranging a stack of old vinyl records when I felt a gaze on me. My roommate, a woman named Mira who had never warmed to me, stood in the kitchen doorway, her arms crossed, her lips a thin line. She didn’t say anything, just watched me with a mix of pity and disdain. I went in to get a glass of water, and as I passed her, I saw it again.

The light, same size and shape, hovered by the window in the living room. It glowed a deeper amber now, almost red, and it moved toward me with purpose. I froze, my hand on the faucet. Mira was behind me, but she didn’t move. The light drifted through the doorway and stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel a warmth radiating from it. It pulsed faster, and I felt a pull in my chest, like a string was being tugged. Then it shot upward, passed through the ceiling, and was gone.

I turned to Mira, stunned. She was pale, her arms now at her sides. ‘Did you see that?’ I asked, my voice shaky. She nodded slowly. ‘It’s been following you for years,’ she said. ‘I saw it the first time you moved in. It was hovering over your bed when you slept. I thought I was seeing things, but it never did anything. Until now.’ I felt a cold sweat breaking out on my back. ‘What does it want?’ I asked, almost pleading. Mira looked at me with an odd tenderness I’d never seen from her. ‘It’s not a something,’ she said. ‘It’s a part of you. Elias knew. He’s been trying to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. You were too busy making a mess of your life to see what was growing inside you.’

I stumbled to the living room, the music still thumping. On the floor, amidst the chaos, I saw Elias’s journal, half-buried under a pile of books. I picked it up and flipped to a page marked with a ribbon. There, in his careful handwriting, he had drawn an intricate symbol, a circle with a wavy line through the center. The caption read: ‘The light child must be acknowledged, or it will consume the bearer.’ I looked at the pile of my belongings, the chaos I had created, and realized that I had been trying to drown out something that wouldn’t be ignored. I felt a warmth growing in my chest, and I looked down. Through my shirt, I saw a faint amber glow, just above my sternum. I screamed, and the light burst from me, filling the room, and then subsided, leaving me breathless on the floor.

When I opened my eyes, the room was still. Mira was kneeling beside me, her hand on my forehead. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘It’s part of you. Always has been. You have to accept it.’ I looked at her, and I saw something in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before: a shimmering, amber tint. ‘You have it too,’ I said. She nodded. ‘We’re not alone. There are many of us. We carry the light child. It’s not a ghost or a demon. It’s a piece of the universe that chose us to hold it. But if we deny it, it grows restless. It wants to be seen. It wants to be born.’ I sat up, my heart pounding. ‘What does that mean?’ Mira smiled, and there was a beautiful, terrible sadness in her smile. ‘It means you have to let it out. It’s a gift, but it’s also a burden. And if you don’t, it will tear you apart from the inside.’

I thought of Elias, of his wild theories, and I finally understood. I went to him that night, as he sat by the window, staring at the sky. He looked at me with relief, and he didn’t say a word. He just opened his arms, and I fell into them, feeling the light between us pulse in unison. We didn’t fear it anymore. We acknowledged it. We gave it a name, a small thing, like a prayer: ‘Amber, we see you.’ And for the first time in months, the peace I felt was not the numbing quiet of denial, but the deep, resonant calm of acceptance.

But peace, I learned, is fragile. A few weeks later, I woke up to find Elias standing over me, his skin glowing faintly, his eyes burning like twin suns. ‘It’s time,’ he said, and his voice was not entirely his own. ‘Amber is ready to be born.’ I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move. I watched as he placed his hand on my chest, and I felt the light in me surge, pulling at something deep in my being. The room filled with a blinding luminescence, and I heard a sound like a thousand glass chimes. When the light faded, I was alone in the room, Elias’s journal lying on the floor, open to a page I had never seen. It read: ‘The light child grows. It will seek a new host when the old one is consumed. Do not look for it. It will find you.’

I am writing this now, years later, in a small cabin in the woods, far from the city. I have accepted that I am a carrier of the light child. I have learned to contain it, to give it my attention when it stirs, to let it be seen in the dark hours. But sometimes, I feel it tugging, as if it wants to move on. I keep a journal of strange symbols, and I draw the amber disc over and over. And I wonder, in the quiet moments, if there are others out there, holding their own lights, waiting for the day they are called to birth something that has no name. I wonder if, when I die, the light will pass to someone else, and I hope they are ready. I hope they don’t fight it, because it will consume them. It will consume them from the inside out, leaving only a shell, and a memory of a light that was once peaceful, once loving, and always hungry.