It was always a dream of Alex’s to see the northern lights; the rays of colorful lights that seemed so magical and unreal. The tigress had only seen them in movies previously and at one point even thought that they were a fictitious creation just to make movies look better. When she learned that they were real, she made it her goal to one day see them with her very own eyes and not through red, green, and blue pixels. Every winter, the young striped feline knelt down in front of her open bedroom window and looked up into the sky, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the phenomena would occur right over her house. It never did, but the disappointment that she felt each time never discouraged her from holding out hope.

She did the same thing every day throughout many winters. However, as she got older, her interests shifted from spying on the sky to tennis, to boys. Eventually, northern lights were just a thing she was obsessed with as a kid and she never really spoke about it again. Her fascination with them was still in the back of her mind, but once you were an adult, there were just a lot of more important things to be thinking about.

“Alex, pass me the potatoes please?” said a tall and bulky tiger that was dressed in a fancy white button-up shirt.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Alex replied and reached for the large bowl of mash to hand it to her cousin who sat directly across from her at the large dining table. It was the Marx family reunion, an annual thing where tigers and non-tigers who bared the Marx name through marriage came to hang out and catch up. It wasn’t Alex’s favorite thing to do in the world, but she was fond of a few of her relatives, so seeing them once a year wasn’t all that bad. Plus, if she were to no-show, she’d be getting an earful from both her parents, that was for sure. With her newfound fame in music, relatives who hated her before were actually somewhat nice to her now, which she wasn’t a fan of, but it was better than them continuing to be unpleasant. There was still the occasional sarcastic remark about how she was “spoiled” or that she was “forgetting where she came from”, but that was what families did, right?

The tigress smiled as she handed over the bowl of mashed potatoes. She then went back to her own plate as she half-listened to all the different conversations that were going on all at once. The grilled beef, pasta salad, and mashed potatoes were comforting; every little bite she took reminded her of home-cooked meals she missed out on while being on the road. It was a nice contrast to GrubHub meals. She smiled as she chowed down on her food and was right mid-chew of a piece of grilled beef when she heard her name called out from the pile of conversation.

“Alex, remember when you used to wait at your window for those aurora lights in the sky?” Alex’s mom, an older tiger lady who shared a bit of a resemblance with her daughter (minus the long fangs) said as she pushed her glasses up and looked over at her daughter from the other end of the table. “She used to sit there by her bedroom window and look up at the sky, hoping that one day the northern lights would appear there.” Her mother chuckled a little, the rest of her relatives that were listening to the story her mother was telling glanced at Alex before they let out a collective “aw” followed by a bit of chuckling too.

Alex stayed quiet for a few seconds before she defended her actions as a child. “You told me they were real; you didn’t tell me that they were only in the far north.” The tigress shook her head.

“It was in the name, Alex! Northern!” her mouth let out another one of her hearty and warm chuckles. Her other relatives chuckled, too, but Alex didn’t hear them, she tuned out and was staring out of the window that was behind where her mom was sitting. It had been a while since she last thought about those pretty lights she was obsessed with as a kid and hearing her mother bring them up made her realize that she never did get to see them. She continued to stare blankly out the dark window behind her mom and at the sky, as her extended family chatted and ate, she was only snapped out of her daydreaming when her cousin asked her to pass the gravy for his potatoes next.

“Here you go,” Alex handed over the bowl of gravy to her fellow tiger before she continued munching on her food and thinking about the northern lights and how she still really wanted to see them for herself. She had the time now that she was on a break from her work for the winter holidays and she definitely had the money to go wherever she wanted. After taking a couple more bites out of the food on her plate, she pulled her phone out and sent a text to her assistant, something she wasn’t quite used to doing just yet.

‘Hey, Steph, I need you to look for tickets to Iceland for me.’

A few minutes after she sent her text, her phone buzzed with a reply.

‘Of course! When do you want to leave?’ was the text she received.

Alex pondered about the date for a few minutes and looked through the calendar app on her phone. When she figured out a good timeframe, she quickly typed up a reply and sent it over to her assistant before putting some more taters and gravy onto her plate.

Stephanie was great at her job. She had only asked Alex a few questions about the nature of the trip she wanted to go on and was able to book flights and draw out a recommended travel plan for the tigress to follow to find the northern lights. While it wasn’t guaranteed that she would see them, the duration of her trip allowed her higher chances, plus it was the right time of year when the night sky was darker, so they’d be more visible. That doll of an assistant of hers even booked the tigress in a business class ticket, remembering that one time she complained that the first-class experience was not worth the massive price difference between it and the business class cabin. With her bags packed and her travel plans in place, the tigress was off to the airport and boarding her flight to Iceland in no time. She was recognized upon boarding and the cabin crew was ecstatic to have her on board. This meant she was very well taken care of as she flew over Asia and the European continent.

14 hours later, the Airbus A350 NEO landed at Reykjavik Airport and Alex made her way off the plane, through immigration, and into the airport where there was a dapperly-dressed white wolf waiting for her with a sign that read ‘Ms. Marx’. She rolled over to the man with her luggage and was escorted to a black Mercedes that then took her to a hotel that would serve as the place where she’d stay when she wasn’t driving and camping out in the wilderness. The first thing she did when she was in her hotel room was unpack her things to make herself at home, and once that was all done, she flopped down on the king-sized bed of her mini-suite and let out a sigh as she looked up at the ceiling. She had a whole month to explore what Iceland had to offer, but she wasn’t going to waste it sleeping, not even on the first day. Besides, it was mid-day, the best way for her to adjust to the new timezone would be to not sleep!

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