Her Stars
Prologue
How many times have you tilted your head and looked to the sky? Glassy eyes reflecting how the clouds look upon us. Ever wondered at the sun or the moon? The universe? and the galaxies that paint it? Like the brush strokes from the worn hands of an artist. Are we alone? Does anyone ever look to the stars and wonder if we exist? millions of questions and not nearly enough answers.
Remember the times you fell asleep with thoughts of stars racing across the heavens? Or the times you rubbed your eyelids until your very own universe of stars exploded across the blackness behind your irises? T
he world may not all speak the same tongues, or see the same tides. We do however, all see the same sky. The same stars, and the same questions shadow all of us tiny humans. If we all stare and behold the mysterious silence of our starry sky, then why do we often forget the childlike wonder of them?
Ever since we can retain memory, we remember that when lookup as the sky blackens, little lights that create a glow are there. We expect them to be there. What would our lives be like if the stars weren't in the sky? What would we see instead?
Black
She closes her eyes and sees darkness. She opens her eyes and she sees darkness. The sky is a brilliant blue in the afternoon.
Shades of pinks, reds, oranges, and the occasional violet stain the sky in colour in the early dusk and dawn mirroring the vibrant world below. Then, when the sun has gone to sleep, the sky turns black. Nothing to see, nothing to admire. Nothing except for what the mind can conjure within the low lights. Man made synthetic lights illuminate the sidewalks and road way.
They do nothing to illuminate the lonely darkness overhead. She often wondered, with that wild and wonderfully human imagination, what the darkness may hide. Other worlds, civilizations? Maybe another curious soul. As she grows, she still tilts her head to the sky. She smiles into the dark. Just in case anyone needs a smile even one from so far away.
She reads of olden times when there wasn't only one star but millions. Burning, glowing. lighting the sky above and twinkling with unfound knowledge. She tries to imagine a such a world. A world above her own for her to look at while the biggest star - now the only star,slept through the dark, dark night.
It is not until many years later, many dark and wonder filled nights, that she sees the other stars. The stars that burned and fizzled out centuries before. Freezing, and silencing the secrets and wonders they jealousy guarded until their very end. It is only when she is old and frail. Lying in a cold blank room, the bed placed near a window by her request.
Children and grandchildren gone to join the last star in sleep. That she sees the balls of burning gas and debris that she has only read of and has longed for. While the gentle breeze of the earth, sings her into a final sleep through the open window, the lights that burst into life through the dark of her eyelids- the dark that is so like her sky. Welcome her home.