Eve's Incomplete Passage
Shona's countless childhood New Year's Eves watching London's fireworks spectaculars overlooking the Thames fostered an almost spiritual awe of the millennium's oncoming.
As that momentous eve approached, she knew one perfect viewing spot awaited fulfilling her - as Big Ben tolled 2000's advent, Shona would stand on Westminster Bridge toasting the future's brilliant unknown horizon from that sacred vantage between lands old and new.
Her meager secretary wages allowed only modest accommodations in the years preparing for that visionary midnight rendezvous. But Shona spray-painted a ghostly white velvet dress with red and blue accents to resemble both the cosmic nebulae she adored and River Thames' glimmering reflection she'd overlook during auld lang syne.
That gown was her party of one ensemble debuting at 1999's end, awaiting transient eternity. Thus her radiant diary entry Christmas week after decorating her quaint rented flat with fairy lights still aglow:
"My millennial outfit is FINISHED before Y2K weekend!" she gushed. "I prance before the mirror feeling timeless somehow. This NYE SHALL be my ultimate!"
Hours later Shona's relieved mother in Glasgow rang upon finally receiving affectionate assurances from her focused daughter. Their conversation even touched whimsically on previous century's changeover in 1900 - had Shona's great-aunt Violet also felt such anticipation on a bridge that New Year's Eve before a carriage collision cut short her awed stare?
"We moderns with microwaves rarely grasp what past progenitors faced daily," Shona mused. "Surviving annual uncertainty was realer. Maybe Violet glimpsed 19th century's finale wistfully from some misty bridge...now she'll bear me company welcoming 2000's glow!"
But no independent witnesses ultimately surfaced definitively tracing Shona's path late on December 31st, 1999 after bids over cordless phone to meet friends for pub farewells to the 1990s. Her diaphanous form was identified days later sprawled halfway 'cross Westminster Bridge just before concrete gave way to opposite bankside.
No signs of violence appeared examining her lesions. Perhaps a fateful slip or heart seizure collapsed her there alone? The millennium turned unnoticed by Shona - the Y2K dawn instead finding her broken body bagged respectfully if unceremoniously, that resplendent hand-crafted gown never debuting under festive night skies.
Yet eagle-eyed midnight witnesses nowadays describe a startling young apparition near the precise spot Shona perished - the phantom of an exuberant girl glancing expectantly about in vivid party dress seemingly blurred from this mortal plane appearing annually.
She manifests briefly most years through the silvery Thames mists, millennium-hued attire flashing like pearly scales beneath blooming starbursts cracked wide over London. This venerated yet forlorn ghost lingers but moments atop history's endless waters awaiting a celestial hour fate disastrously ushered in without her.
Might Shona be trapped now somehow in chronological limbo just prior to 2000 finally unfurling as unjustly robbed 20th century child? Her whole existence streamed towards the approaching temporal milestone. So perhaps only in death finds she means reaching that longed-for revelation night representing eras dashing by those lured from their journey too soon.
For unrealized human potential must endure somehow on and on, whether above death's river or merely in onlookers' minds glimpsing her phantom suspension over skyline eternally tensing towards the unattained. Our ever presence surely contests concrete claims we expire conclusively after final earthly acts. Lingering will rolls on as charted seasons though vessels freeze.
