By far, Cuore's least favorite activity was sleep.
By definition, the activity of sleep was disturbing; it was a state of partial or full unconsciousness during which voluntary functions are suspended and the body rests and restores itself.
The problem was, you had no control while your functions were suspended. You had no awareness for that period of time and there was no guarantee you would awaken once the cycle was over.
Cuore didn't understand how any sane creature would willing go into such a state, or worse still, look forward to it.
Besides her fear she would never wake up again if entering sleep, there were the unsavory memories and nightmares that awaited her if she did.
Thus, Cuore had decided, much to the irritation of her adopted parents, that she would never sleep again.
This was the fourth night of her decision, and while she had fallen sleep for minutes here and there, she was determined to see this through.
Her parents had other ideas.
Cuore wasn't like most children, and she knew exactly why they had pulled her out of her room and chatted with her and led her through hallways.
They were concerned about her and obviously tired themselves.
She wasn't sure, however, why they insisted on going to the roof.
The night was delightfully chilly; just enough to make it different to the interior of the castle but not enough to make it too cold to sit outside. Cuore took in her surroundings while Edge made a comment about what an 'eyesore' the tower was.
Rydia just rolled her eyes.
Cuore peered at them suspiciously, "Why have we come to the roof?"
"To look at the stars," Rydia answered, smiling at her.
"…Why?" Cuore asked, tipping her head to one side.
Rydia didn't seem to know how to answer that. It was as if the question confused her, which in turn confused Cuore.
Why would anyone come outside to stare at pinpricks of light in a dark sky? What purpose did the activity serve?
Edge just answered her question with one of his own, "Have you ever looked at the stars before?"
Cuore blinked and admitted, "I…have not."
"Then come here," he said, waving her over.
She pattered across the roof with silent footfalls and then glanced up, looking at these 'stars'.
They were unremarkable.
Some of them weren't really stars at all; some were distant worlds, or even supernova remnants, or interstellar nurseries. But from this distance, they all looked the same. Dots.
Cuore wrinkled her nose, unimpressed and let her gaze fall downward to her parents. They must have seen her face because Rydia made one of her own and sighed.
"Cuore," she said, as if prompting her to speak.
The little teal haired girl frowned, "I fail to understand the purpose of this activity."
"Cuore, not everything has to have a purpose," Edge explained, giving her a funny look. "You've never seen the stars before, right?"
"Not from this location." Cuore affirmed, nodding.
"Then, just look at them." he finished.
She was still unconvinced, but Rydia steered her by her shoulders and made her sit between them. Cuore settled on her knees and cast a few more looks upwards, wondering why people stared at the stars and found them so fascinating.
"You know," Rydia began, wrapping an arm around Cuore's shoulders, "People say they can find shapes and images in the stars. They call them constellations."
Cuore's eyes lit up when Rydia passed her a book, and she flipped through a few of the first pages eagerly, absorbing the information with practiced ease. Cuore paused on a page listing several of these 'constellations' that could be found in their region at this time of year and she spent a few moments glancing between the pages and the stars above her head.
She found the general shapes, but as she continued to look, matching up the book's pictures with what her eyes saw, she became unimpressed once more.
"I do not understand your primitive pictographs." Cuore informed them, frowning.
Edge laughed slightly, "You have to use your imagination,"
Cuore stared at a grouping of stars, squinted, tilted her head to the right, and then the left, before finally shaking her head.
"My imagination is insufficient." she told him.
"Oh come on," Edge said, pointing up, "that one kind of looks like a bird,"
Cuore raised an eyebrow and tapped her finger against the design in her book he was referring too. It was a vaguely shaped, crude outline of what she supposed was a bird, listed under the name "phoenix."
"A bird with a broken wing," Cuore countered, gesturing to the stars. One wing in their picture looked as if it bent awkwardly, and if it were a real bird, it would never fly.
Rydia frowned, "It does look a little twisted…"
Cuore nodded and continued, "Why is this one's designation 'Bootes?'"
"I have no idea," the summoner admitted, shrugging.
The little girl pursed her lips and pointed to another constellation off to their left, "That one is supposedly two hunting dogs, yet truly they are only two distant stars. How do you humans see these designs? It's truly incomprehensible…"
Rydia sighed, "I would have thought you of all people would have liked to see these, Cuore."
The little girl shifted to look at her, "Explain."
"Well, you came from up there," the summoner said. "Your creator traveled all those stars, right? Isn't it…I don't know, interesting to see them from here?"
Cuore paused to consider this before she glanced up, "I…suppose. I never considered what the stars looked like…"
For all her knowledge of how they formed, what they were comprised of, where they actually were in the galaxy, she had never seen them. Not with mere eyes.
Cuore glanced down at the book still open in her lap, "Your pictographs are merely the human need to familiarize the world around you into something you can process and understand. I do not see the way you do."
"If you don't see what we do when you look up, what do you see?" Edge asked her.
She studied the sky, "I see…I see the limitless nature of the universe. It's depths and it's complexities. I see far away planets and bright, distant stars. I see a collection of data, of possibilities."
Cuore shrugged, "At least, that's what I want to see." She grinned and glanced at him, "But really I just see specks of light."
Both her parents laughed and she continued to flip through the pages of the book Rydia had handed her, commenting, "I may not understand the purpose of these shapes you've deemed seeable in the stars, but I can pick out the constellations."
"List them." Rydia challenged, "And point them out to us."
Cuore cast her a sidelong glance, knowing the summoner was trying to tire her out in the hopes she would fall asleep. But Cuore had, regardless of actual blood relation, inherited Edge's tenacity.
So she rose to the challenge and nodded, beginning with the "phoenix" already pointed out and moving around the entire sphere above their heads, methodically listing the constellations from the book and pointing them out while still wondering why people saw what they did.
Figures of supposed people were haphazard, the ones said to be animals had missing and twisted limbs, and some of them were merely a few lines that she failed to see any pattern too.
Cuore was tired by the time she finished, but she also felt triumphant and glanced at her parents in the hope of earning some sort of affirmation for her efforts.
However, all she saw when she looked was that their plan had evidently backfired and all her listing had done was put them too sleep.
Cuore sighed and shook her head, climbing to her feet and straightening her dress. She held onto the book, hoping to study it further, and with a final glance at her parents, she hopped over them and prepared to leave the roof.
At the staircase she paused and looked up in time to see a meteorite streak across the inky void, burning out before it even entered the lower atmosphere.
"Goodnight," she whispered into the night, smiling at the stars before she hopped down the stony steps.
Author's Note: For those of you keeping track, Mythweaver and I spent some time together in the real world and thus, there were explosions of plot bunnies and such...so expect many stories to be spewed out in the coming months!
This was one such plot bunny. Mythweaver was looking at my "coffee table book" which is a stargazer's handbook and was like "I don't get these primitive pictographs."
And thus, this story was born!
Hope you enjoyed some cute fluff