Word Count: 2,378
Nobara is seven years old when she falls in love with the sky.
"A long, long time ago, when all the world was new, the sky had only the sun and the moon living in it. And humanity, while they thought that the sky was perhaps a little lonely, questioned it not."
Nobara's eyes grow wider than saucers, her hands drifting over to clutch her best friend Fumi's arm, as Saori, a much older girl new to the neighborhood, spins her fateful tale. She feverishly bounces up and down, so excited she's very nearly vibrating. "Why not?" she demands.
Saori laughs, the sound by far one of the most beautiful Nobara's heard in her short life. "They didn't know anything else, Rosie," she replies, leaning forward and laying a little boop! upon Nobara's nose. "How do you explain that there should be something where nothing had ever been?"
"So then how did we get the stars?" Nobara continues. Fumi's fingers dig into her arm, resisting the way Nobara shakes her about, and Nobara calms a little, cuddling up to the trembling Fumi in apology.
Saori reaches out, and Fumi relaxes with the head pats. "Well, as time went on, there came people whose feats and deeds were so great, they passed into legend. The legends were passed down through the years, generation after generation, until eventually the memories and stories mingled with the magic of the young world, blending together and transforming into the stars. The people of legend were brought into the sky to be given new life, and the constellations, immortal shapes made of stars in the sky, were their reward," she explains.
Nobara coos in awe. Saori stands up, tiptoes over to the window, and gestures for the girls to follow as she unlatches the glass to let in the cool, night breeze.
"Let's go!" Nobara squeals. She pulls herself up to sit on the windowsill, tugging on Fumi's arm to help her up.
"Shhh!" Fumi hisses as she climbs up, though she's pretty close to Nobara's volume herself.
The two first graders settle down, cuddling up to Saori, who leans way, way out into the night, almost as if she's trying to fall out of the window and into the sky. She grabs the edge of the window before that can happen, however, as wild and recklessly wonderful an adventure that might be, and she stretches her free arm out to pick out the stars.
"You must also understand, the people were not the constellations," she continues. "The constellations are merely symbols of who they were on Earth. That's why, even out of the first to be brought into the sky, the zodiac, not all of them are human, like Leo the Lion, there, almost right above us." She guides their eyes to that part of the sky. "For you see, once upon a time, in the ancient times, there was a farmer whose livestock was getting terrorized by a lion, so one day, sick of having his livelihood taken from him, went to his neighbor to borrow a sickle."
(Nobara fidgets on Saori's lap, trying to get comfortable in the tangle of girls' limbs whilst simultaneously following along with Saori as she picks out the sickle's stars in the sky.)
"Three days and three nights, the farmer sat waiting for the lion to return. Three days and three nights, the farmer went without food or water. Three days and three nights, the lion finally returned, hungry for its next meal. The farmer made eye contact with the beast, and quicker than lightning, he came for its head with the sickle, and p'CHA! He cut the lion's head off all in one swift motion!"
The girls gasp— Nobara from excitement and Fumi from fright— as Saori rocks back and forth. Her teetering threatens to have all three of them tumble out of the window, a fear made all the more reasonable by the way she hangs by the mere tips of her fingers.
"That's so cool!" Nobara says, bouncing up and down on Saori's lap when the rocking settles down. Fumi gives her an incredulous look, her eyes wide and watery as she sweats bullets full of relief.
"But the lion could have eaten him!" she argues once she finds her voice.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Nobara snippily recites.
"Ladies, ladies, please stop fighting," Saori says. She pats both their heads, and everything is okay again.
Nobara shoots her a toothy, little grin, and she giggles. She puts both her little hands atop Saori's, holding it to her head to keep the head pat going. "I think that the farmer was super cool!"
Saori hums, scratching the crown of Nobara's head like she's some sort of little kitten. (Nobara purrs accordingly.) "Well, his story gave us the constellation of Leo," she says, "and since the legends remember him as a brave and passionate adventure, the people born under Leo's star sign tend to be like that, too."
"Ohhhhhh," Nobara gasps, while Fumi coos in awe.
Saori leans against the edge of the window, shifting the girls around on her lap a bit. "Yup," she says, a bit of her energy starting to fade. "Through time, enough people were eventually brought into the sky that they formed a whole society of magical, celestial people up there. They made friends, fell in love, had children— that's where all the stars came from, after all."
Nobara wriggles around on Saori's lap, adjusting her position such that her legs stick out the window, and she kicks her bare feet back and forth. Fumi does just the opposite, and the two girls rest their backs to each other.
"Now, naturally, the kingdom in the sky had a king, and he was granted eternal life, unlike the rest of the growing number of citizens he ruled over," Saori says, poking her head out a bit to watch the stars as they creep across the sky, and this seems to give her a bit of her charisma back. "However, as he was not also granted eternal youth, once every generation, he picked out one child with great magical potential to be his protégé, and when they grew up, he would transfer his very essence into their body, merging their very consciousnesses together, this turning back the clock on his aging for the time being."
Nobara watches as the moon creeps into view, large and round and silver and oh-so beautiful, and the sight of it absolutely enchants her like nothing else in her life has ever quite managed to do.
"One day, there was a girl named Riko who was born in the sky," Saori murmurs, and the younger girls have to sit very still and really focus on her words to make sure she catches them properly. "Gifted with more raw magical potential than anyone who had come before, she was destined to become the next vessel for the sky king. But, when she dared defy her fate, she was instantly doomed to fall to Earth and be forgotten."
As if on cue, a shooting star streaks across the sky. All three girls sit in silence for what could honestly have been an hour, staring at the faint, mottled milky way splashed across the black canvas of the night and the hundreds of thousands of pinpricks of light smattered throughout, wholly and rightfully enraptured.
Nobara shivers after a spell, goosebumps forming on her bare arms and legs.
Saori stretches her arms and back, pushing the girls off her lap and back into the house. "All right, that's enough. You guys are getting heavy now. I can't feel my butt."
The girls giggle as they tumble back in, although Nobara nearly crushes Fumi as they roll across the floor, back to the futons. Fumi squeaks in protest, but manages to push Nobara off of her.
"You're heavy!" she complains as she scrambles away.
"Nuh-uh," Nobara retorts, putting her hands on her hips. "You're just not strong enough!"
Fumi sticks her tongue out, her tiny, fragile body quaking with all the anger she can muster, which, while not much, still burns bright in her. Nobara tugs at her eyelid, jeering back at her.
Saori shuts the window and locks the latch. "C'mon, guys, it's time to go to sleep, or else my mom's not gonna let me do this again."
This at least quiets the girls (or at least, it sets Nobara straight), who all tuck themselves in for the night.
Well, it sets Nobara straight for perhaps fifteen seconds.
"Saori," she whines after a bit, worming her way over to the older girl. "Saori, I can't sleep. The sky girl story is too sad. I can't stand falling asleep thinking about a tragedy like that."
"Where did you learn that word?" Saori mutters, her exhaustion audible, if only Nobara were worldly enough to know that.
"Saoriiii," she drawls, causing Fumi to stir beside her, "give the story a happy endiiiiing!"
"All right, all right." Saori rolls over to better face Nobara, props her head up by her elbow. "So, the sky princess fell to earth, doomed to be forgotten, and indeed, soon even she forgot where she had come from. She grew up on Earth, living a normal human life with her adoptive mother, but always yearning, in the back of her mind, for something more magical, always wishing, from the bottom of her heart, for something from the sky."
Nobara snuggles down into the futon and closes her eyes, letting Saori's words wash over her. Fumi's already fallen asleep beside her, her quiet snores adding to the lulling call of sleep.
"Then, one day, the prince of stars descends to Earth in search of her. He searches high and low, gathering companions and having adventures, working his hardest to remember all the details about her. Then, when they meet at last, after a months-long quest full of searching, her celestial origins start to show in her again." Saori gently brushes a few wispy bangs out of Nobara's face. "She, having studied the stars while on Earth, realizes she knows how to read them, has known all along, and she uses them to discover her true destiny, for the stars had never written for her to end up like this. The prince restores her memories of the sky, and now knowing their true fates, both live happily ever after."
Satisfied, Nobara slips off to sleep.
A year later, Saori and her mother move to Tokyo.
Nobara screams loud enough to be heard from space, sobs hard enough to make the earth beneath their feet tremble, while Fumi silently weeps, losing nearly half her water weight from her eyes alone that morning. Both start picking up books about the mythologies of the sky, the stars, and the constellations, just in case they can recapture the magic of Saori's stories, but for some reason, they struggle to find anything even remotely similar. Even when they finally get internet access in Nobara's decrepit, old farm house, their search remains fruitless.
Fumi gives up.
"I think she was just making stuff up, Nobara," she says one afternoon. The two of them are lying on the wooden floor of her father's study with books open before them, the dust they send flying by flipping through their pages flitting through the air and catching the light just right. "I don't know if I wanna keep doing this."
Nobara scowls, though it's not very scary since her canines fell out the other day. "All myths are made up, Fumi," she points out.
Fumi frowns and looks down at the book open before her. Are they really myths if they're only known by one person? Because myths and legends, they have power. It wasn't just Saori who taught them that; the village elders tell them time and time again to watch their words when they play in the woods, for they may speak the name of some old, slumbering forest deity. And if they did that, they might not leave the forest the way they came. How can something so powerful come from just one person?
Fumi drifts away from the search through the stars, but Nobara never lets go.
At the age of eighteen, Nobara sits on her windowsill with the window itself open to let in the summer's night breeze. There's a flashlight in her hand, shining onto an astronomy textbook open on her lap. She cracks her neck, her eyelids growing heavy, and gives herself a moment to stare up at the midnight sky. It's a full moon tonight, the silver light casting down upon all the countryside and painting it all into shades of black and grey.
A meteor flies overhead, a bright white streak that zooms by. How lovely, how lucky. Nobara clicks off her flashlight.
Then comes another streak of light. And another one, and another, more and more, one after the other, in a beautiful shower of lights.
Nobara frowns a little, though, her forehead creasing at the sight.
"That's odd," she says quietly to herself. She shuts the textbook, lays it aside, and swings both legs out the window so that she can lean farther out into the night. The shooting stars aren't falling as thick or as fast anymore, so it's probably just a fluke, but… "There's not supposed to be any meteor showers until July."
She watches the stars fall for a few minutes, counting just over a dozen with her tired eyes, then yawns. It's been a long day— that's kind of how the summer solstice works, actually— but she's got chores to perform in the morning. It's best to get ahead of Grandma's nagging.
She gingerly steps back inside, takes one last longing look at the sky as she shuts the window and draws the blinds, then drifts off for the night, utterly unprepared for the coming 'morrow.
author's note i. usually i prepare these a few days before i plan to post them but i was so caught up in the euphoria of posting this story to ao3 for my tumblr mutuals that i forgot that i also commit to cross-posting here.
anyway starting next chapter i'm gonna bring back the ancient practice of having the characters talk to each other in the end notes. there is nothing you can do to stop me. thanks for reading, leave a review, follow me on tumblr (hua-fei-hua), and stay safe out there~