Stardust

I think I'm in another world.

No, no seriously. I think I'm in another world.

Now before you question my sanity, let me describe what literally just happened within the past day. It's simple, really. I'd just finished a long day, hopped off the bus towards my home, opened the door, collapsed on my bed, called it a night.

And then I woke up inside a completely different bed. How do I know that? You ask? Simple. Even while my eyes were still closed, I knew that it didn't feel like my bed – and if you've ever woken up to an unfamiliar ceiling in an unfamiliar bed, then of course you'd start panicking too. In fact, the only reason I wasn't having a panic attack right now is because I had one literally five minutes ago, so you came at the right time for me to start telling this story.

I'd spent the entire time that I had been awake lying in my not-really-mine-bed just thinking and looking around the room that I was currently in. Looking at the architecture – which by the way, did nothing to help because I never studied that subject in the first place – and the clothes that I was wearing. I spent a good chunk of my time considering the possibilities of what happened; the whodunit, howdunit and whydunit. Classic stuff, really.

The sunshine glittered through this ridiculously medieval room and I could already feel the summer heat permeating through the open window – which made no sense because it was currently late autumn from the country that I came from, plus there was also the entire fact that I hadn't felt this heat ever since that one holiday trip to Madrid with my high school, or the time when I went to the Caribbean.

Huh. My half-addled brain thought as I picked at the rough cloth that I was currently wearing – not my old graduation hoodie, ironically enough, this was much more comfortable. I've travelled quite a bit on Earth, haven't I?

This couldn't be anywhere on Earth, right? The smell of vintage wood and fresh bread soaked the fresh air, air which could be breathed in so easily it felt like I had climbed to the summit of a mountain in Scotland. I could hear the rattling of carriages on cobblestone like I was in Pennsylvania all over again, bright voices called out various goods and prices as the general populace of my current location sprung to life. It baffled me, really. Don't get me wrong, Pennsylvania was a wonderful place to visit but even their inhabitants wore Levis and bomber jackets and coats and whatnot. Not this… Outdated style of clothing, this looked like I had just read Beast Quest and decided to do a half-assed cosplay.

Where was I? Right. Another world.

Now there were plenty of different reasonings that I went by that both supported and rejected this argument. From the language that I understood perfectly and I don't mean the fragmented Japanese that I picked up while shuffling through Tokyo, because I could hear every word and every sentence and you know how some languages have different sentence structure? Nobody was really speaking in Yoda mannerisms, which honestly may have scared me more.

Yet, I just couldn't see how it suddenly became summer, or how I even got into these clothes, or how I even managed to go from a single bed to a full double bed. Little things, really. But in a foreign environment these things stuck out like major sore thumbs and I was 200% sure I hadn't gone on a drunken bender the night before.

The world could've just decided to have a nice day and I really did go on a bender, I thought to myself as I propped myself up against the headboard, feeling the hot sun bake my body underneath the heavy (and itchy) quilt. It was quite serene, really. Or maybe I've just been kidnapped.

The door smashed open.

"Wake up!" I metaphorically and almost literally shit myself in fright when one of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life stomped into the tiny room – no seriously, he had to bend over to fit within the doorframe. This man was terrifying, angry and huge.

And also extremely ugly, but I'd never let that truth come to the light of day. With a receding hairline, tribal warpaint and – was that a knife?! – a knife in hand, he looked every part of an unhinged criminal. Looking upon his massive, hulking figure (moreso his knife – that thing looked dangerous), I couldn't even muster my voice above a tiny squeak and scrambled into a sitting position as he kicked the side of the bed in his fury and glared down upon me.

Nevertheless, when a big, terrifying unknown man kicks down your door and strides in with a knife and most likely malicious inten;, your brain tends to mental summersaults, as you process your situation and the words before formulating the perfect response.

"Um… Hi…?"

Great job.

He sneered once and all thoughts of survival abandoned my brain, yet instead of stabbing me with his knife or doing whatever he was probably about to do (Like seriously, that knife wasn't your average butter knife), he tossed his head back and practically screamed down the corridor.

"Roddick! The seventh's up!"

Silence for a few moments, before footsteps begun approaching as this person presumably begun to come to my room. In my half-addled-half-confused-scared-shitless state, I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind after I realised that we were speaking the same language.

"Who's Seven?"

He gave me an incredulous look for a moment, as if I'd just struck his mother in the face before growling angrily – I didn't know humans could growl that low – at me, something that honestly made me shiver and shut my mouth immediately. This man was dangerous.

"Seven?" He didn't look happy. "You have a problem with being the seventh member, huh? Didn't think we'd need to beat it into you again, do I?"

I didn't look or feel like I had been beaten up by this guy - and I would have felt it. But at the same time I wasn't exactly wanting to find out how it would feel.

"You got a fuckin' problem?" He was starting to get extremely confrontational now, which honestly made me want to shrivel up into a ball and roll away into the sunset.

"N-Nope! None at all! M-My name's Seven, number seventh, alright! Y…Yep!" My self-preservation took over any form of sass that could have possibly appeared at that moment. Mainly because he had that knife at his belt - really sharp knife, honestly, and it glinted cruelly in the sun's glitter.

Besides, it was only a nickname given by the man. I had a name, it was… Uh...

My name was…?

Wait.

What is my name?

Okay hold up. Hold up hold up hold up hold up.

You see, it was at that moment, that I learnt that my memory was fucked.

But still, it was just my name, right? I'm sure anyone would forget their name, right? I still knew the names of my parents, sibling and dog. Right? Right? It was like that feeling you get when you tried to remember a word and it's on the tip of your tongue. I knew it. I had to. Everyone in Earth has a name and a surname, maybe a middle name. If there was one thing I learned across cultures during my travels was that everyone had a name.

Just a name? Just a name?! Jesus fucking Christ, I hadn't realized how terrifying it was to wake up in a place I didn't know, without anything familiar like my clothes or phone or wallet or anything. Not even my name, too? Fuck!

Calm down, My rational part of my brain smothered the panic rising within me and I slowed my breathing instinctively. Take time to think about it. It's just a name.

I took my time to think about it - spoiler, I couldn't remember. It was like my brain was selecting the things that it wanted to remember and the things I couldn't. I could remember the past clearly. I could remember them. My family, my friends, the old lady I met at the airport on the way to Japan, the tour guide who almost tripped over a penguin in Edinburgh zoo, the headmaster that shook my hand during my high school graduation. Even if their faces were faded, I could still see moments of clarity in those memories. My memories.

But what were their names?

Joseph. John. James. Jamie. Jin. Jack. Jenny. Jennifer. I tried process of elimination, assigning a name to a person and hoping it stuck like Vaseline on rubber. Jeremiah, Jonathan, Josey, Jenny

No good. No good no good no good no good no good. My heart thudded against my chest, painful bursts that accompanied my rapid thoughts in a duet of panic. Nothing stuck. No names, no nothing. Flashes of memory blipped past me and distant images blurred before vanishing.

I came from the planet of Earth, I liked books, games, parties with alcohol and cats over dogs. I knew what I did last night, the night before and one night from 3 years ago for some reason. I was still me. Right? I could remember my sister and me getting into a fight because of after-school clubs, the scolding that my mother gave me when I wasted food, the kind touch of the old lady as I helped her onto the plane, the disgusting stench of fish as the penguins waddled by.

But…

What did they look like? The quiet, nagging question stuck to me as I continued to stare into nothing. What did they look like?

I didn't know my sister's name, or her face. But those memories, they were real. They had to be. I couldn't have just spawned in at my age with all these experiences like a computer gameenemy would. My panic eased somewhat, it had to have been amnesia, or something along the lines of that, right? I still knew of home. I still knew of home. There had to have been something that had happened between last night and my awakening that did this to me.

"Hey!" My little mental panic situation became a literal one when the man roared in my face, replacing every existential question with cold fear and anxiety as he begun to wave around his knife a little too close for comfort. "When I talk, you listen! Do you understand?!"

"Yes!" I bit my tongue, the man looked inches from grabbing my face and giving me a solid punch. "I'm sorry! I'm listening!"

"Yes sir!" Spittle flew into my face, but I didn't dare to wipe it off.

"Yes sir!" I practically screamed back his words, my body reactively scrambling back to the other side of the bed as the man slashed at the edge of the bed with his knife, tearing at the cotton insides.

For a moment, there was silence. A deadly silence only broken by the man's heavy breathing and my own erratic, hyperventilation. Then, the man begun chuckling – not in a friendly, easygoing manner, - he laughed dangerously, like an evil villain from a cartoon.

Except that it wasn't a cartoon, he was fucking scaring me and I wanted to go home.

"Good. Good to know you mages know your place." I nodded frantically to whatever he was saying, my eyes refusing to leave the knife's sharp edge. "Get the fuck up. Now." With those 5 words I acted, immediately throwing myself out of the bed onto the ground as he continued to eye me. Have you ever seen David Attenborough narrate over a lion stalking its prey? That's what it felt like, the fear that was bubbling in my chest seized my throat and vision, I could feel my entire body tunnel-visioning this one man and tensing up in fear.

"Garrick, I'm here. You said the seventh's finally up?" A new voice entered the room and I could barely make out the other individual behind the man with the knife called Garrick, I assumed.

"Aye, Roddick. Little shit even talked back just cause he knows a few spells. Fuck." Garrick spat onto the bed that I had literally been lying on seconds before as the other man – Roddick - ducked into the room.

"Grima's balls, he looks terrified." Roddick sized me up in a glance and chuckled. "You sure Ylisseans like him will even work well?" He tossed an item in his hands at me, something that almost crashed directly into my nose had I not caught it tentatively. "Take your tome, mage. We're leaving today and you're coming with us."

The object in question was in fact a book, a mid-sized volume written in a language that I didn't understand at all. Was it some kind of manual for foreign countries with fear-inducing tour guides? I didn't know if the name "mage" was any insult on the four corners of Earth, but I nodded my head along to whatever Roddick was saying in the first place.

Roddick wasn't as terrifying as his buddy Garrick, he was less… Crazy. I hadn't even talked to Garrick for 5 minutes and I knew that the man had something dangerously wrong with his brain. Garrick had lots of muscle, a scary knife and an even scarier face – never a good combination. Roddick looked much much less crazy, but he himself had a pair of axes strapped to his sides and they were crusted by a dark stain - just the thought of what that potentially was sent a cold shiver down my back.

They were both insane, that was for sure. Just that one of them didn't have a knife.

"Well? The fuck're you waitin' for, Number 7? Get moving." Roddick was no less cruel as Garrick, either as he walked over and practically tore my arm as he roughly dragged me out of the room, down wooden stairs, past a main entrance and immediately out of the door. Gone were the previous thoughts of kind sun and tantalizing promises of bread in the air as I was roughly shoved down the wooden steps of the building and bundled into the back of a cart, all that was left in my mind was survival.

Do you know how terrifying it is, to not only be in a extreme situation but also have memories missing in your head while you're in it? I was dressed in a simple tunic, trousers and uncomfortable boots to match. My usual outdoor jacket was nowhere to be seen, my wallet hadn't even been on my person when I went to sleep last night, and my phone couldn't be found anywhere.

Besides, would you even be able to call emergency helplines in the middle of nowhere?

And so, my story started with two insane individuals, no phone, no wallet – nothing. Nothing but some clothes and a stupid book.

Turns out, they weren't two insane individuals, they were insane criminals.

Now I could be in Norway, really. Or maybe in the south of America – who knew what foreign scenery passed by outside but what was important was that A: I was in a village not too far from another cute little village called Southtown and B: I was a part of some real shady shit. Because we were getting ready to raid said Southtown. Like, rob it. 'Pillage and burn', as Garrick had named it so. Some part of me thought I was dreaming, while another part of me just didn't think they were going to 'Pillage and burn' literally. Because, you know. It was illegal and I was fairly sure that there was some human rights act against stuff like this, right?

Scratch that, not even Norway or America could have (probably) thought-crime like this, even if they had similar scenery. Also, when I said "getting ready" I meant "on our way", because that's where I was, packed away with a couple of others in a tiny, stuffy carriage as we rumbled our way across the countryside. The others with me weren't anything too scary to pay heed to – sure, they were definitely intimidating; but none of them were on the Garrick level of scary, like it went from my school teachers to university deans to Garrick on my level and these guys with me were definitely below Garrick.

There was a lot of us, though. 7 of us in the same cart, huddled together like rats in the winter. Except, you know, it wasn't winter – it was summer, which made huddling together a disgusting experience. Body odor and bad breath mingled in the air whilst sweaty arms jostled and collided whenever we ran over a slight bump in the road and the only chatter to be heard would be from a person's neighbor, because god damn carriages are loud.

My neighbor himself was completely different to the other tanned, muscular, and quite frightening members of our merry criminal band. He was like me, a little scrawny guy, perhaps three or four years younger? He wore nothing remarkable except for one object – a strange copper pot on his head.

The kid's teeth were chattering and his leg kept bouncing up and down, occasionally kicking me whenever we hit a stray rock. He looked worse than me – and that was frighteningly impressive itself, with an expression of constant terror and the unshed tears glittering in glazed eyes. Beside him, barely smaller than the lad himself was a simple wooden spear – it looked so… Primitive, like a piece of sharp metal on a stick. A pathetic weapon.

Some part of me felt pity for the poor guy, so the next time he accidentally kicked me again I decided to strike up some form of amicable conversation in an effort to calm my own heart.

"You… Uh… Alright?" His eyes darted back and forth between the carriage walls and myself. "You don't look so good." His fright became even more pronounced when he realized I was talking to him and not the wall.

"M-Me? N-N-Naga, I'm fine, why d'you ask?" His voice was clearly elevated from fright as he shuffled ever so slightly away from me. "Pardon your lordship but I'm mighty fine, yep!" His face was whiter than snow, a feat considering how fucking hot it was right now.

"You…Ah... You sure?" My own fears and paranoia momentarily sedated by concern for the teen. "You don't look like you're a part of them-" I jutted a finger to the other men across from us, their conversations unknown in the rattle or the carriage. "You look scared outta your mind."

Maybe it was because I was the first in a while to speak to him in a friendly manner, maybe it was because he wanted to vent, maybe it was because I didn't look like the other criminals here, but he took a deep breath and nodded extremely slowly, as if he was expecting backlash for admitting such a fact. I'm pretty sure he didn't expect me to let out a long breath in the foul air and chuckle. "Thank god I ain't the only one then." I felt myself relax as understanding dawned on his face – since when had I gotten so wound up in the first place? He himself relaxed minutely, still guarded, yet I could see a spark of hope in his eyes.

"Are… Are ya like me, mister?" I almost missed his words with how quiet he was being and had to lean in to hear them. "Were you… Were you taken like me…?" Jesus, what happened to this kid to make him so skittery?

"Yeah." I breathed out, regretting it literally half a second later when the stench returned. "Woke up, got given this book and tossed into the back of this cart." I tapped on the frayed edges of the book – it really wasn't anything special at closer glance, just a book with some stupid hieroglyphs and a metal cover. Apparently, this was all I had when I came into the company of Roddick and Garrick – no wallet, no jacket, no phone.

"I thought as much atta glance, you didn't look like them thugs to me, mister." With his own little sigh of relief, his posture relaxed considerably beside me. Christ, kid looked like he just came out of a car accident. "They… They killed my pa, Roddick did. And then I was taken, been with em for a week or so now." His voice cracked off, a moment of vulnerability that he quickly hid away by hiding his eyes underneath the pot. "Plegians like em take lads like us, use as sport. That' how I got here, sir."

"Oh. Sport. Great" Was all that I managed as he wiped his eyes. "What do you mean, sport?"

"Meat shields, seein Ylissean on Ylissean, killin. That'tta what Ma told me when I was little."

I froze, looking for any signs of a bad joke from the kid. Staring at him; his horrific expression, his unshed tears. They didn't look faked to me, the visceral emotion in his eyes was real. He'd seen some shit that I'd never have seen before in my life, regardless where I travelled. The hyperventilation returned again as I realized the consequences of getting into this cart. It was sobering and terrifying at the same time, the mental sedative that I had subconsciously drugged myself with into thinking that it was a bad dream evaporated, this wasn't a dream. I could feel pain, smell, taste, think, feel.

And right now, I was feeling denial and only denial.

There was no way in hell this was happening to me. No fucking way.

I was just a guy, with no name and no names to put to familiar faces in an unknown land. Thousands of emotions reeled back and swung forward with the power of a truck, slamming into me as fear continued to creep into my subconsciousness. So I sat there, dread slowly filling my stomach and my chest rising and falling rapidly as I watched this young, skinny and frightened kid - the result of this world's cruelty - tremble in fear.

"What's... What's your name, kid?" I tried to throw myself against the mental wall of dread, pushing it as far back into my mind as a heart thudded painfully. It wouldn't help anyone if the both of us lost our shit in this situation, something primal within me reared - an instinct for survival.

"Donnel, sir. The name's Donnel." I could barely manage to understand what he said, the drone of the cart wheels and the pounding heart drowned out practically all other sound.

"Seven... Mine's Seven." I could only respond with bitterness; bitterness at the world, bitterness at how unfair it was, bitterness at the inability to remember my goddamn name.

Bitterness, because this fake name was all I had.

We were only a night away from Southtown now, I could even see the faint spire of a church in the distance past a small forest. The horses were currently resting, while Garrick and Roddick – bastards got their own cart – roared vicariously and chugged on alcohol. The rest of the members dispersed for the night, some quietly munching on their own ration while beadily eyeing others, some took to camaraderie and were conversing with other members, if there was one thing they all did; it was stare at me and Donnel in contempt.

I was seated with the young teen – far away from the fires and the other members, huddling together with the blankets that were in the cart and talking idly amongst ourselves. Something about our co-realisation that we were fucked sparked a kinship between us after I had calmed him down by chatting about the most useless shit - stuff like what my favorite color was, a recipe for spaghetti, what Coldplay was, a kindship formed between two individuals who had quite frankly been abandoned by luck.

"It's probably because… You know, we aren't one of them." I whispered to Donnel as another member of Garrick's group flicked us a finger, we had both finished our ration a long while ago – it wasn't much in the first place, even less than the regular members. My own voice sounded foreign; a raspy, weak sound that emanated from my lungs after hours of breathing down hot air. Anxiety still ate away at my stomach while adrenaline continued to tingle through my veins - but it was manageable, right now.

"Yeah… That'a make sense, Mister Seven." Donnel was much less jumpy now, thank god. While he still froze up in front of the others and went deathly pale in front of Roddick, it was clear that I was the only one he could hold conversation with. I didn't question his habit of calling my name with a title, the poor kid had gone through enough already. "Them Plegians don't take too kindly to us folk, see?"

Now that word interrupted my thoughts.

"Plegians?" That word didn't belong in any dictionary I knew. Hell, it sounded like some alien race from Star Trek.

Donnel gave me a strange look. "Yeah, that's what them people are, Plegians. Come from Plegia to loot. Bandits, the lot o' em." He pulled his knees closer to his chin, shivering slightly in the night air. Again, I felt bad for him – freezing half to death with his father's murderer not even a minute away. I was surprised he hadn't picked up his spear and charged Roddick the second he stepped off the carriage.

"Is Plegia a city?" I wanted to take his mind off more heavy matters and honestly was genuinely interested now, after all; I hadn't heard of any place called Plegia on any world atlas. "Is it near America? Asia? Europe?"

Donnel looked thoroughly confused, as if I had just started speaking Plegian Star Trek language.

"Issa country, Mister Seven… what's a U-Rope? Is that where the 'spag-etti' is from?" At least I snapped him out of his mind's reprieve.

I blanked. Donnel blanked back.

"What?"

"What?"

"Plegia isn't a country, there's 195 countries in the world and Plegia definitely ain't one." I thought back to all those geography classes and travel books from years back. "You sure Plegia ain't a city in east Asia or something? And yes, spaghetti is from Europe... I think."

"Ay-zha?" Donnel shivered again, tucking his body beneath the thin blanket. "I'm sorry, mister Seven, but you're speaking in some fancy dialect for me." I had thought he was joking around, to turn round and say 'Sike! We're in the Bahamas!' but this kid genuinely didn't know the names of some of the biggest countries. I ran a few names by; like Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy, France – yet nothing registered. This kid wasn't joking, unless he was a better actor than Samuel Jackson. He didn't know anything about any planet on Earth, but instead of other countries like Plegia and Ylisse and Regna Ferox.

Perhaps my very first statement might make some sense, after all. I pondered quietly for a moment as Donnel continued to talk about the countries that made up this continent.

Is this… A different world…?

Now if I thought about it, there was a lot of evidence for this argument. Take the architecture, for example – I was never an expert in buildings, only taking pictures of them – but these places looked old. They still had chimneys and stone roofs; the walls were still wooden. The roads weren't made with cement, but with cobblestone. The fashion sense was way too old for my liking too – and that came from a guy who rocked a kimono that one time in Japan. The weapons they wielded, transportation used, the very ration that I crunched upon (and nearly broke my tooth), the way people talked and acted. It was all… Otherwordly.

But there was a lot of evidence against this argument. And I mean a lot.

World hopping is literally impossible. There's no way in hell. Nope. Nada. This isn't a children's storybook where you get Alice-in-Wonderlanded into nowhere, if people could world hop on Earth then nobody would even live on Earth on the first place. There's no scientific fact that supports world hopping. I don't care what anyone would say to back up world transmigration nor did I want to hear what they said. My brain was still in the denial phase.

I like science, science explains things. Science showed me that I could get to point B from point A. Science does not show me how to get to point C. in a parallel experiment done by the elective module group in uni.

For a person like me who failed biology? That's enough science to say that world hopping isn't possible.

But what if it was?

Okay, shut up. My brain was apparently out of it, having a nice daydream after my earlier mental breakdown. Don't even bother thinking about it. It's Earth. We have one sun and one moon. We have stars. We have industrial technology and we have guns, not spears. Spears are outdated and used by cavemen or thrown by Olympians once every 4 years. I nodded quietly to both whatever Donnel was saying to keep him going and to my own thought process. My logic was impeccabl-

Wait! Stars! I tossed myself down onto my back - much to Donnel's surprise, almost stabbed myself with his spear - I was never much for a stargazer but I knew what the big dipper was – Polaris, the north star.

I remembered my parents teaching me how to find it, me and my sister having a competition on who could find it first – a small thorn embedded itself in my heart, but I ignored it momentarily to focus on the vast sky above me – and… And…

Jesus Christ

It was breathtaking.

Cloudless, black sky, with trillions of small, glittering stars in the sky that ranged from light pinks to dark purples to normal whites. It was beautiful, it was greater than all my sights seen before – the Tokyo Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Niagara Falls, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal- everything.

It was so grand, so vast, that it quelled the anxiety and sated the adrenaline inside me by filling me with a sense of childlike wonder. It was nothing like back home where we'd have to put a telescope in the living room and try to peek out of windows into the clouds. Hell, if I had to describe it, it would be the beginning of the universe. Colors of all kinds danced out and twinkled, comets trailed by and everything out with our worldly reach came alive in a blaze.

This sight could've ended wars.

"Oh my god." I couldn't say much else, there was no way I could say anything else – my previous search for Polaris long forgotten. The people of this land saw this sight daily, they could see a multicolor of hope and possibility within those stars. "Oh. My. God." I had to whisper it again, my brain unbelieving my eyes.

"Donnel… You see this all the time?" I turned my head slightly to face the younger kid as he stared upwards too, seated against a makeshift bed of a crate and thin blanket. "Is it always like this?"

Donnel shrugged. "More or less so, Mister Seven. What, never seen anythin' like it?"

My gaze returned to the sky, my eye catching a gorgeous purple star that glinted like obsidian in the moonlight. The star twinkled gold as I continued to stare at it, and a nearby comet illuminated it in the most gorgeous shade of red that I'd ever seen in my life. It was like Van Gogh was painting the skies before me – and I was watching it from start to finish.

I think it was at that moment exactly was when I truly thought for the first time in Ylisse that I was in another world, not because of science, not because of some buildings and people. But because of the sheer alien beauty of the sky before me, with its eldritch twinkles and entrancing trails.

This… This wasn't my world. My world couldn't come to have beauty like this, my world couldn't conceive beauty like this. Earth was ugly, humanity was ugly – just like the humanity on this world. But those skies above reminded me of the joy – of what I couldn't grasp now… Life? Happiness? Love? It was beyond my mortal thought.

But those stars continued to shine for me, filling me with the joy of that one unidentified emotion. This was humanity's greatest treasure, this had to be. Inside, some part of me leapt for joy. I think I started to understand the passion of stargazers now.

"No, Donnel… No I don't think I have."

Once in my life, years and years ago – my parents took my stargazing atop the mountains of Scotland. It was incredibly humbling, to be a witness to hundreds of stars in the sky – sure, they may have not been multicolored or made my eyes flash kaleidoscope – but the memory still stuck with me. I'm no avid stargazer, can't even find the Big Dipper in the first place much less any of the big constellations.

But I know what it's like to bear witness to something greater than us if that's how mysterious I'm going to sound while explaining it. I went to China and remember trying to climb Mount Hua – unfortunately, it was extremely rainy that day and local services said that it was too dangerous for individuals to climb up there on such a humid day, but I managed to get up quite far up the trail that was safe.

I saw the stars from there, shot them on a crappy little Android camera. But they were just as bright as they were from when I was 10 years old. Maybe my brain like automatically improved the camera quality of my eyes in the past lmao, but it looked exactly like that.

I haven't seen many sights like the stars at all, especially with the coronavirus halting any travel plans for the past year and a half. So I took to my favorite fandoms in boredom before catching up on some old stories that still got updates. They inspired me and my mediocre writing to rise up to the challenge and with nothing better to do – I set forth and sat down in front of a computer.

10/05/2021: Grammar edits alongside some general changes.