"Last night, I dreamt about the stars," offers up the fair girl adorning a gaudy, lemon-shaped hat which proved just a tad too big for her- sliding along her hair and tilting off-kilter as her shoulders scrunch up with a giggle. She even goes as far as to raise a palm to her lips; suppressing a coo of content, but rather poorly. Her body language suggests her emotions are at their peak; she radiates an aura of giddiness typical of her character.
"There were so many of them all over the sky," she keeps on, "like hundreds or maybe even thousands - oh, totally thousands, actually, way more accurate - and it made the night sky look yellow-y and bright. Can you imagine that? A sky with reds and oranges that wasn't a sunset? Those colors are in, by the way. Like, what if that happened and if people were confused because the night sky looked so much like the day? I know it's usually blue, so there's still a difference, but when I think night, it's just black. No light."
She's gone from stacking plastic cups in groups of assorting sizes to tracing a five-point star on a napkin; her finger only temporarily indenting into the papery material before she traces another line of the shape and all previous remnants of her hard work disappear. So, she keeps trailing a manicured nail along, wanting the art piece to do her imagination justice; wanting to simultaneously show all triangular points; wanting to prove that she had captured a star in her mind's eye, if not anywhere else.
"Then I could wear two daytime outfits. One for the actual day, and one later on… ah, I don't know." Her spark sort of fades in time with her finger being removed from the napkin. She feels silly.
A dark-skinned boy chooses then to bite down on his lower lip, and he is quick to blame it on the squeakiness of his chair whenever he shifts the weight between his feet. A guitar is situated on his lap, diagonal across his torso but otherwise neglected, even with a pick in his hand and that hand along the strings. It looks like the girl's substantial words captured him mid-strum, and no amount of melodic creation can lure him back in for the time being.
Here we go. "I mean… it's just light," he begins uneasily, and he knows her well enough to take the silence afterward as a regret. "No offense… hear me out. You know, like, just because it'd be bright all the time doesn't mean people wouldn't sleep, Cait. People would still get tired at night and it's possible they would sleep through it even if it was a pretty sight. Not to say it's a good thing, but…"
The blonde girl, Caitlin, sighs, but lacks the energy to fathom an argument to defend her possibilities, her stars. "That's sad."
"Sleep-deprivation isn't happy." He tries to get her to laugh. It doesn't work.
But she will try and talk it out. "Nooo. It's like, so sad that you'd have to sacrifice something important, but boring, to see something that's less important but definitely more of, like, a rarity. It's like you choose between sticking to normal habits, and taking just one teensy tiny, itty-bitty moment to just rebel and be in awe because you'd be seeing something astounding and gorgeous. Would sleep even be a big deal, then? At that very moment?"
The male blinks, cocking his head to the side. Where was this coming from? Not that he was the type to underestimate his friends, but there was a sort of gist to her tone that didn't seem right, or just a bit much. He wished, then, he could see what she's seeing. It bothers him, so much that he isn't sure he wants to encourage the subject lest he feel entirely and absolutely guilty for bringing about an ignorant opinion which offends her. Something in him tells him to walk off, to make an excuse about actually having an extra hour tacked onto his shift, but he hasn't the heart to leave her alone without one of their other counterparts substituting his presence.
"I know what you're thinking, Wyatt." She props her arms up on the round wall of her work station, the one that seems to be a life-sized version of her silly hat.
He tightens his grip on the guitar, an apology ready on the tip of his tongue. "I- uh…"
"You have this look on your face like, 'ooh, Caitlin's been reading too many philosophy columns in the magazines again'."
Wyatt, relieved, grimaces and gives a half-smile to her full one. He really needed to learn how to suppress his thoughts' emotional response lest it automatically show on his face in the most obvious way possible. Like now. "It's interesting to hear, that's all. Just surprised. Not sure what to say, since it seems so personal to you."
"Honestly? I'm not too sure I know what it's all about, either." Her eyes drift off from his face to over his shoulder, watching passerbys. "But my dreams are, like, usually filled with really cute guys or shoe sales or puppies, so it kinda seems like I'm meant to think about this one extra since it happened out of nowhere."
"What do you think it means? Forget what I said about the sleep- what was the first thing that came to your mind when you woke up this morning and it registered?"
"Oooh, good question.." It certainly is, and Caitlin furrows her eyebrows as she disregards all exchanged between them up until now, tosses aside the brief small talk made with each customer that's stopped by since she clocked in, even wills herself to forget the promise she'd made to her father on the phone moments before walking out the door: she needed to stop by the grocery and pick up a few things for dinner. "Huh, let's see…"
Instead, it is seven in the morning again, and she's slowly rising from a bright pink pillow and rubbing petite fists at her eyes, no longer craving the traces of sleep that had lulled her to that very state the night before. Her toes curl under the duvet and soon enough her legs pull up to her chest, silk nightgown slipping down her thighs ever so slightly and leaving goosebumps in its wake.
She starts to remember the dream.
She's sitting on a grassy hilltop, gaze dedicated as it fixates on the spectacle above her. Just as she had tried to put into words to Wyatt- wait, no, focus Caitlin! Remember: he's not here right now. …But, anyway, there are only little bits of dark blue scattered sparingly amongst the brilliant glows of stars; pretty, pretty stars. They flicker like faulty artificial fixtures on a ceiling, but are not so in composition. They are far more profound. For every hundred that dim momentarily, there are tenfold which shine brighter in compensation. And she feels the colors on her face and body saturate under the luminsence and it is just so, so pretty. She wants nothing more than to reach for just one and hold it in the palm of her hand, if only to become even closer and involved in the scene.
So many stars, and she claims them all as her own.
"I feel like it means… I have to be at peace. Or at one point I was, and I'm being reminded of how nice it was. Because everything was so soothing, like a spa day, but more natural and I didn't think it was ever supposed to come to an end."
Someone breathes onto the back of her neck directly under the choppy layers of blonde hair and instead of stiffening up, her eyes flutter closed.
And she can still see the stars.
The person takes a seat beside her silently, patiently, and perhaps almost desperately. And before she can stop herself, she's leaning onto his shoulder and humming as an arm snakes around her waist and pulls her onto a firm chest.
She isn't sure if they're meant to talk, so she decides to play it safe, happy that he seems to do the same. They sit there, having craved each other's presence even when seconds ago she could have sworn she was the only person left in the whole entire world. She finds a rhythm in the stars' dancing to match his heartbeat, allowing an airy laugh to slip past her lips at her childishness. Soon, he's chuckling too, a low rumble that reverberates through her head in careful waves and rocks her body just so gently.
"It was a paradise. Too perfect to be real… even if I really wished it could be. …I need to figure out how to achieve something so beautiful in real life."
The stranger kisses the top of her head, reestablishing his presence. She whispers his name, loving its taste and almost wishing she had the confidence to say it against his cheek-
Together, they catch the stars on their clothes and radiate brightness back up into the air.
She's too far gone, now, Wyatt notes, letting her speak at her own pace and watching her with a softened expression. He's okay; she seems to be, too.
"Gooood morning' dudes!" Another blonde, this one male, calls out.
And suddenly the atmosphere changes.
The sky shatters into a million pieces and Caitlin gasps. The grass beneath her is replaced with a sticky floor which leaves residue on her shoes. The lighting is too bright, too unnatural, too anticipated. The stranger is no longer touching her, no longer keeping her safe with his mere presence and proof of the way her body slots against his.
She's awake, and this morning retreats to the very back of her thoughts once more.
But it is mere skateboard wheels along the marble which jolts Caitlin from her reverie altogether; quicker that she really wants and enough to send her reeling back with shock. She would have lost her balance and fallen completely backwards had Wyatt not shot a hand out to grab her wrist; granted, he wishes he could have been gentler, but it was a moment of panic and she seems grateful enough.
…That is, until he sees the tears in her eyes; little stars of their own around green irises, dancing, flickering- slidingdownherface.
"Hi, Jude," one of them says; but it is unknown whom.
Luckily, the newcomer doesn't catch the hesitation. "What're we talkin' about?" His eyes are blue- like a daytime sky. Caitlin concludes, he's the personification of her leaving sleep and living back in the reality of the day.
"O-oh, it's nothing, I…" she swallows hard, transforming in that instant. No more tears. She's monotonous, no longer basking in a dreamy wonderland. It hurts.
She flashes two rows of white teeth forcefully, completely ignoring Wyatt's desperate stare from the corner of her vision and trying again, "I had a dream about the stars, Jude."
The grip on her wrist immediately tightens- Wyatt suddenly understands. Too late, though. He might have prevented this otherwise.
Anyway, it was true; just a dream. And they were stars she would never see again, because if not behind her eyelids, he keeps them just beyond her reach.
She never wants to sleep again.
fin.