It is still dark outside; dawn is only the merest suggestion, a faint lightening along the blackened eastern ridgeline.
These are the indigo hours, that mysterious space between night and day when the dark only just begins to recede in favor of a sheltering blue.
On this day, the sky seems closer than ever: Despite a forecast that predicted a zero percent chance of precipitation, last night’s lenticular clouds that soared across the southeast peaks seem to have decided to stay the night, and at this hour, the snow flies. It’s only flurries, of course — not enough to stick, nor even enough to last past the sunrise — but it lends more magic to these brief and beautiful moments.
I’ve been up already for more than an hour, able to sit in the warmth by the fire and watch the sky change color while I work. Until a few moments ago, the changes were so gradual and subtle as to be very nearly imperceptible; now, suddenly, in the last few moments, light is showing through behind the clouds, turning the world outside the window a soft gray-violet mix of peak and fog.
In another hour or two, the clouds will have moved onward, blown out by the autumn wind already shaking the aspens’ skeletal branches. The sky will once again be a bright clear turquoise of talismanic hue, the same shade as the stones that adorn our bodies and the sills that keep evil spirits without.
This is, after all, the time of year when they walk.
It’s a time, too, for Wings’s latest work: a pair of earrings in the color of the same sheltering sky, a near-pure indigo as that color is truly defined, aswirl with purpling siltstone clouds and flurries of snow-white matrix, the four corners of an autumnal sky above a cascading silver light. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Sheltering Sky Earrings
We live beneath the protection of a sheltering sky. Wings honors its shape and shade and spirit with these earrings, long dangling drops anchored by a protective Skystone. Two rich blue squares of natural American turquoise, likely from Arizona, are set into spare, low-profile bezels and sit atop sterling silver posts. Each stone is the intense, electric blue of pale indigo, marbled faintly with white host rock and occasional whorls of coppery-red matrix. At the bases of each anchor stone hangs a long sterling silver pendant, each attached via a pair of silver jump rings: a flared skirt of sterling silver edged on either side with sterling silver triangle wire. The image of a bear paw, symbol of protection and healing, is hand-stamped at the base of each pendant, magnifying the sheltering effects of the turquoise. Earrings hang 2-7/8″ in overall length; cabochons are 1/4″ square; pendants are 2-1/16″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; blue American turquoise
$775 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As the light ascends, the cloud mass hovering overhead comes slowly clear; no snow now, but gray skies and a bitter wind. As we head inexorably toward winter, we can do with a bit of extra protection: the medicine powers of Bear, who will soon leave us for her long sleep, and the eternal safety of a sheltering blue.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
