Starlight
by Darren "RedFox" McRoy
There was, at one time, a need for a team. This strike force was to be formed of "five agents, capable of covert assignments inside foreign territories", and the responsibility of assembling it was given to a famous late commander's son, who himself was fast gaining respect. King Maximillian Acorn, of the Kingdom of Knothole, charged this newly-formed group with the assignment of locating his long-lost son and wife, who had long ago been sent to the Floating Island for safety. The precise details of what transpired on this excursion are not important; they can be found in the history books. But tonight, on a hillside far from the lighted city streets and wild cavorting of drunken party-goers, the leader of this squad and his first recruit are searching for something far more complex…
The moon was always most beautiful when it was full. Crescents also held a certain appeal, with their thumbnail appearance and the sense that one could just sit on the curved slope and survey the entire earth at a glance. The bright white sphere, though, illuminating the sky around it and the ground below, simply could not be beaten in terms of splendor. It was ironic that it was always surrounded by gibbous phases, ugly squashed circles, rejected attempts that fell short of perfection. The fullness was so fleeting; dominating the sky for two or three nights before slipping back, like a ball slowly deflating. Ancient myths told of leviathans who devoured and regurgitated the moon monthly, only to begin the cycle again. It seemed inappropriate that such a revolting tale should be attributed to such a magnificent thing; even that gibbous didn't deserve to be called a nauseating quarter-devoured (or quarter-regurgitated) morsel.
A cool breeze rippled through the night air; leaves blew and fields undulated as their individual blades of grass briefly succumbed to the greater power of a mere pressure change. Loosely attached petals broke bonds with their flowers and floated away, to fall somewhere else and there lie, until the next gust would relocate them yet again, and again, and again. Eventually they would come to rest, trapped somewhere where wind was powerless to further influence their destiny, there to decompose and return the nutrients stored in their frail structures to the earth. Soon enough, those nutrients would be the building blocks of a new flower, with its own petals, to someday undergo the very same sequence. And on and on, to eternity.
The breeze passed and the hill was silent.
Hershey kept her eyes closed and listened closely. In the distance, her keen ears could just pick up the faint notes of a rambunctious radio, surely deafening up close, notes to which numerous couples were surely dancing wildly, drinking, and having a memorable evening. She had never been obsessively fond of parties, but was not generally known to turn one down, either. Valdez and Wombat-Stu had both opted to go without hesitation when Elias had asked. So why did she find herself here, alone on a hillside, with her commander?
Geoffrey, like any normal person, enjoyed a good time, especially one spent far away from that arrogant hedgehog. More than one keen feminine eye had been cast his way recently, and there promised to be ample pickings at a bash such as this. Even moments after he'd declined the invitation, he wondered as to why. Something inside him had brought him to this hill, to gaze up at the heavens and just think. Maybe he just needed to clear his head of all the crazy events of late; that made some sense. What made no sense at all was why he was here with Hershey.
They had both been wandering, contemplating, philosophizing, and just trying to resolve their own personal issues. Geoffrey had been thinking, in particular, about Elias. The reappearance of the prince, so long thought to be dead, was liable to have very potent effects on the monarchial system. Geoffrey having keen interest in the affairs of Knothole's government, he had been trying to decipher exactly what the consequences of this discovery might be. Hershey, on the other hand, was trying to figure out where her own life was leading her. She was still reeling from the effects of discovering that the wolf she believed truly loved her wanted only to use her as an unwary accomplice to a murder plot. Now she had a temporary assignment where she could use her many skills, but what after that ended? Where did she want to go with her life?
Had fate brought them to the same hill?
They both lay on their backs, perpendicular to each other, their heads three feet apart.
"Look," Geoffrey said, pointing up into the sky. "It's so clear from here."
The stars shone brightly across the sky, pinpricks of alabaster on pure ebony.
"See any constellations you know?" asked Hershey.
Geoffrey chuckled. "Yeah, actually, I do… see the super bright star over there? There's another one below it, and then three pairs to the right, just about the same distance from each other. It's a river. There are supposed to be tigers drinking from it, but I can never find them."
The grass was cool, still slightly damp from a midday drizzle.
"You know," Hershey said, "those are the very same stars that our ancestors looked at, thousands of years ago. They looked up and saw a river. Somehow, they saw a river in those eight stars."
"I guess they liked to look beyond the obvious," Geoffrey replied.
The red light of an airplane crossed the southeastern section of the sky. The crimson blink seemed unnatural; a spot of blood on a grayscale newspaper, an intrusion into a spectrum devoid of color. Eventually it vanished behind one of the few clouds in the sky and purity was restored.
"I wonder if they sat on this very hill," mused Hershey.
They sat in silence for thirty seconds.
"It's amazing," Geoffrey said finally, still staring upwards. "Many of those stars are dozens of light years away. That means the light we're seeing now was emitted… who knows how long ago, before the before Robotnik, before the Great War, perhaps before we were even born."
Hershey remembered this. Someone had once told her that to gaze into the sky was to look into the past. She pinpointed one star of medium brightness, and fixated her eyes upon it. The light of a better day.
"Those beams of light," Geoffrey continued, "have traveled all that way, that unimaginable distance, just to reach our eyes and be processed by our minds. That's their only purpose."
"Kind of makes you want to look at every star, doesn't it?"
Apparently someone down below had found a way to make the obnoxious radio blast even louder, such that it was relatively audible even at their distance. The singer was screaming something about what he had done with his rival's girlfriend. Cymbals crashed and guitar moaned. The two did their best to blot our the cacophony.
"Do you believe there's life out there?" asked Geoffrey, putting his hands behind his head and adjusting his position on the slope. "Other sentient creatures?"
Hershey smiled to herself. "Of course."
"Yeah… me too. I couldn't accept that we're alone… that we're the only living things in such a gargantuan universe."
The lower part of the moon slid under a small cloud, turning ecru in hue.
"Each of those little dots," Geoffrey said, "is an enormous ball of gas, hundreds of times bigger than Mobius. And nobody can count how m any there are… thousands, millions, billions. When you think about it, you really do feel rather insignificant, huh?"
"Yeah…" said Hershey, "but for me it's not about being significant. It's really more about the people who are significant to me."
Geoffrey turned on his side to look at her, with an expression both inquisitive and amused. She caught his gaze, and flushed slightly, but did not look away.
"Anyone in particular?" he asked.
Grass rustled. Petals blew.
The radio played on, but neither heard it anymore.
Author's Note
Geoffrey, Hershey, and all other characters mentioned are copyright to Archie.
This story is just the product of my thoughts after lying on my back in my yard, staring at the stars for a good amount of time.
Let me know what you think. My e-mail is redfox742@yahoo.com.
- Darren "RedFox" McRoy, April 2004