Constellation
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Indigo with wisps of vibrant purple and soft pink, watercolour dissolving into itself. The stars where just small needlepoints scattered all over the velvet embroidery, and the moon was a white crescent slope. Once, they had all been up in the castle and looked at the stars together, but instead got a warning about disaster soon to strike. Tonight there weren't any disasters looming above.
A wind whispered in the trees, weaving myths about the night. A wind caressed the leaves lovingly, and the grass rustled.
"I still don't get why we have to go outside at this hour!" Tokkori squawked, wings beating like leaves whipped and flapped in a storm, desperately clinging to their branches. They just didn't want to leave… and Kirby was afraid, that he was just the opposite. Wanderlust.
"Stars," was all Kirby offered as a reply. His sentences were always very curt, of few words.
Tokkori scoffed. "'Stars' he says! And then I say 'sleep'!"
"Later," Kirby said, wishing that Tokkori would be a little quieter. It would be more fitting to stay silent… They were walking, and they weren't following any particular path, but Kirby didn't want to either. He just wanted to get a little closer to the stars…
The hills looked almost blue on the horizon, just smudges in the dark, almost black under the moonlight. The sea looked grey and dark and still, and the moon cut out a shining silver road on the water. The breeze still sung lullabies in the forest, which always survived against all the odds, and the town slept quietly.
His feet were beginning to get tired.
"Kirby," whined Tokkori as he flew behind the star-warrior. "It's late, and cold, and I'm tired! Can't you look at stars some other night?"
"No," said Kirby. Then, thinking that he was perhaps a bit rude, he said, "Sorry."
"Pfft!" Squawked Tokkori. "Where are we even going anyway?"
"…Don't know," replied Kirby. Tokkori let out another sound, as if he was choking on food, and then he exclaimed,
"I can't believe it! You don't even know where we're heading? This is just awful!"
Kirby didn't reply. He had reached the top of a hill, the top of a really large hill. The grass tickled at his feet, and the ocean was just below them, dark and black and endless. The ripples on the water gleamed silver in the moonlight, and the water looked deep and unforgiving from this height. Maybe it was the darkness.
He didn't want to fall.
He stopped. Tokkori stopped too, and promptly flopped down in the grass. "Here?" He then inquired exasperatedly.
Kirby nodded absently, and the wind tugged at the grass at his feet, and he looked at the sky…
Once upon a time, they had all been out there. In space, he meant. In space, but it was a long time ago… he thought. It felt like a long time. And the stars felt so close here. The whole essence of space and stars, of blue and purple with twinkling diamonds, felt like it was closer to the ground here. Closer, closer, but still out of reach…
Looking up, was like looking down into a well. The sky, unhindered by mountains or forests at the horizon, stretched out endlessly, like a map of the universe rolled out above. Like eternity embroidered down with a thread of moonlight with pearls of starlight on a black and blue cloth, which had then been put up here to watch over Dreamland…
"Are you done soon?" Asked Tokkori tiredly. Yes, Kirby thought. As soon as I'm sure I can remember this tomorrow, well enough to paint it…
…because if he was going to travel out in space on his own, then he needed his own map. He couldn't borrow Dreamland's sky – what would the cappies do then? So he was going to paint the sky upon a canvas, as soon as morning bled orange sunlight at the horizon, and as soon as he was sure he remembered every star correctly.
Every constellation. Every falling star that wouldn't see another night, and the moon. Every constellation, and he would need a lot of black…
"Yes," Kirby then said. I'm done. He turned to Tokkori. "Let's go."
-the bird had no complaints.