DISCLAIMER: I don't own Randy Peterson nor do I own Josef DeSilva. I'm simply their godmother. So I guess I can obtain custody of them if I wanted, but they're stubborn so they'd sooner claw me to death. Grins But get it clear, I don't own any character in this story. For once.

Author's Note: Some of the best literary works are direct representations of life.

So Falls the Stars

"Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost...there is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy time in misery."

Dante

"You have to go. Now."

The words were like burning coals suddenly thrust into the hearth of my heart, branding my soul with the inscription of the loveless, severing with the scythe of the damned my attachments to all things Romantic. For a moment that stretched across the ages of humanity, I could only stand there and stare, refusing to believe she'd meant one syllable of that statement. Never mind sheer self had been obliterated by the words; never mind the glass shavings of my hopeless optimism were being steadily shattered by the diatribes against liars she effortlessly tossed my way. I was determined to persuade her, to sway her, to convince her of my sincerity. I was determined to dub her a disciple of Love.

"Randy, you don't mean that," said I, with a ridiculous and perhaps obnoxious tone of pure certainty. What reason had I to believe otherwise? Manifold, actually. And no sooner had the words escaped me, I very much regretted their having been uttered into existence. They smeared me with the repulsive attributes of an oblivious braggart bathed in his own apathy. I claimed she didn't mean it simply because I wished this to be; I claimed she didn't mean it because somewhere across the ragged surface of my forsaken heart, I wanted her to speak contrary to her anger.

She looked upon me, sharp and scathing. Her eyes were the most fearsome apparition over which I've yet to prevail, for their fiery cyan traits seemed to declare war against the constellations of the heavens. Within those precious irises wherein I'd once seen love, there was an abyss of grave sorrow and a desire to see me no more. "Yes, yes I do mean it. You don't belong here. I don't want you here either. I can't deal with this anymore, Josef! I can't ever be with you without remembering..."

I took a step forward, wholeheartedly hesitant bur valiant nonetheless, or more so foolish. "But things can change!" I was quite sure I looked the full part of the saint urging his sinful brethren to repent at the midnight hour; I pleaded with her, begged her with the yearning of a damned soul yearning for heaven. "It won't always be like this, Randy. One day it'll get better. Please?"

She didn't speak; she only shook her head. I wasn't sure what meanings she was conveying in this absence of retaliation and upheld the hiatus diligently. Was she musing upon my words? Was she, by miracle, actually considering my argument? My heart could only pray as much. Her face softened some, the lines of her furrowed eyebrows loosening up some from the tension they'd entertained. She sighed, then, and I knew the war was turning in my favor.

"Please, Randy," said I again. "We can work through this. You mean everything to me." It was a perfect framing for the prelude to the reconciliation I knew would come. I had told her numerous times before throughout our relationship, had whispered the accolade sweetly to her soul as she dreamt in my arms on occasion. Sometimes, when we were on our lonesome upon the roof of the Brooklyn lodging house, I'd sing my love in the most arresting of melodies, smiling as she slowly drifted away into slumber and dallied with the cherubim of her dream world. Even then I'd proceed with my praises, knowing that somewhere within her subconscious, she could hear me and smile at the sound of my voice.

It wouldn't be one such night.

More than anything, my comment inflamed an anger I had never seen in her. She turned on me rapidly, honey locks whipping across her shoulder as with clenched fists and a purposeful set jaw she said, "and you mean nothing to me! Do you for one minute believe our relationship these past six months was anything but fake? "

I shook my head, not in reply to her query but to my palpitating heart, which sobbed uncontrollably at such a prospect. No, I said to myself, stumbling over the possibilities and grim notions. It wasn't true! It couldn't be. I wouldn't accept it.

"I love you." The profession was as firm as I could manage at the moment. The floods of emotions birthing it had churned from the innermost caverns of my beliefs. Oh that she would believe me! But it wouldn't be enough.

She watched me steadily, like the eagle perched at its wait, eyeing with fierce accuracy the every move of its prey. "I don't return that love, Josef. I never did. It was all fake. I never felt that way about you, and I'd rather die than feel that way about you. Get in your head already. I don't want you here; I don't want to talk to you anymore, and I don't ever want to see you anymore. You keep coming here and trying endlessly to make things right, but you can't change the fact that you lied, Josef!" It was obvious she wished to say more, to tell me within hours what she only had minutes to expel, but she only shook her head again and rested those eyes (once alive with adoration and now dead with betrayal) onto my face. "Go away, Josef. And never bother me again."

It was the first time I ever felt debased by her doing; it was the first time I ever felt as if I'd been crushed and butchered under the knife of her infuriation. I couldn't blame her, though. Not in the slightest. She was right; I had lied. Not the little fingerprints of deceit a child tells her mother in order to refrain from attending school...not the larger treks a lover leaves when trying to cover up a mistake. No, my entire life had been a lie. I had created for myself an entire realm wherein I could dwell and find safe harborage from the stinging realities I knew, and it was in this kingdom that I ruled as prince where none could ever harm me.

I grew to become infatuated with my fancied world. Within its fortifications, I was safe from the hands of my offenders. Under the strict surveillance of my would-be guards, I was protected from burning debauchery. What was my purpose? I'd be more than happy to share. Randy Peterson isn't entirely like us. Yes, she resides in the lodging house and watches the hours dwindle as she calls out headlines to the bustling melancholia of the masses, but in the meanwhile she's nothing short of the youngest puzzle piece in her middle class family. (Though their status might be severely on the downside of that median range, it's a worthy rank nonetheless). She'd moved from their apartment almost a year ago, during an altercation with her father, and had since migrated into the world I'd known since birth.

I didn't sell short her empathy for the street rats of New York, nor did I at any time believe she was too lofty in ego to accept a lower class chap for who he was, but the day I first espied her those long months ago meandering down the docks of the East River in search of accommodation, my heart pounded madly with untamed adoration. She walked with the gait of a goddess, spoke with the dialect of an heiress, and conducted herself with the confidence of a Greek muse. I knew from just talking with her that first day that we'd end up together, despite the quarrels which naturally ensued during her tenure in Brooklyn. I knew from that very first moment we were meant to be together. Forever.

But this isn't a story about what I believed as a foolish Romantic six months ago. It's a tragedy of the underlying deceit that crept across those six months like a hideous beguiling snake. I told her I was of the upper middle class, that my father was a renowned pharmacist who had ties with politicians of staggering social heights. I told her my family was rich in history and culture, that my household swelled with the personalities of not only my single father and myself, but five other DeSilva children. I claimed success in my non-existent school studies and team sports, claimed failures in my relationship with elder siblings I never had, and claimed a number of stories I very well rather forget. Everyone believed I was only staying in the lodging house for the summer at first, and then afterward because of Randy...

I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to be flawless, I wanted to be loved. How could I acquire these entities, however, without impressing her? Never mind that. I wanted to tell her. Every night I went to bed praying that when I woke up the next morning, I'd be the man she thought I was. And when exhaustion left me by means of the sun's merciless rays upon my face, and I found myself yet clothed in tattered rags and fleas, I heaved a mournful sigh and wished I could just tell her...

But I never could.

I returned to my real life that night, a livelihood far below those of my paper-peddling commoners. With my hands shoved down the pockets of my breeches, I shuffled down the cobblestone streets of Brooklyn with the night as my cloak and replayed her words in my mind until my heart was so spent I could've died from sorrow. I kept thinking about how much it must've pained her to pronounce such a diagnosis of our relationship; the profound sadness plaguing her sheer being must've been massive. How it killed me to know I was the cause of her sorrow!

So I did what I had been doing for sixteen years. I ran away. I respected her wish to never see me again and returned to the back alleys that had birthed my mental perversion. I was scared, naturally. It's not like I wanted to embark on this decadent journey. But I knew the only way I could obtain the answer in proving to her my love, the only way I could make ends meet and pour out a profuse amount of apologetics and love...was to remind myself why it was I had lied and how idiotic a mistake it had been. She would've cared for me all the same regardless! Why had I been so afraid?

For the first time in long years, I yearned for the feel of busted springs under my back, but instead felt the cold severity of cement pavement, as I snuggled like a child against the soggy cardboard exterior of a discarded box. Covered in week-old newspapers and dirty aprons cast away from the adjacent restaurant, I slept not at all, kept up somewhat by the promiscuity of my manwhore companion but especially by the notion that I'd lost the one thing in my life that had ever meant something. The light in my usually sparkling navy blue eyes waned, and eventually died by dawn. I couldn't place my mind on anything but her! The idea was unheard of!

"Wake up, scum. We got work to do."

I felt the heavy soles of a boot slam into my ribs the next morning and opened my eyes to take gander upon none other than my long time comrade Shaun Gregory, the physical manifestation of every nightmare I'd had since childhood. Groaning in pain, I rolled onto my back and stared up at him, the sun blinding my sight. The rays behind cast him into a hideous silhouette that made him all the more monstrous in appearance. "Work?" I croaked.

And then the memories slammed against my skull with the ferocity of a vicious Underworld stampede marching for a hope at glimpse of heaven. The touches, the screaming, the sobbing. Only once had I been saved, by a Manhattan gent who called himself Cowboy, but too prideful to admit my sins were imposed upon me, I shunned him and spewed the foulest of curses to him for having ruined my 'business'.

"Shaun, I didn't come here for that stuff..."

He placed his hands upon his hips and rolled his eyes in that sarcastic pompous manner he so wonderfully portrayed. God, why was I infatuated with this guy? Despite all the times he'd verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse me...I was drawn to him like a confounded dog to its master. "For what other reason would you've come, Josef? Don't pull that with me. Now get up."

I sat up, then, and propped myself up on my elbows, the sheen of my lengthy black locks dull as I peered through the misplaced obsidian strands to behold him fully. "No."

He had started off already, but when the blatant defiance caught his ears, he spun around and bore those eyes through my shaky confidence. "Excuse me?" He prowled closer, ready to pound me to my demise. "You mind saying that again? I don't think I heard you right."

I reluctantly rose to my feet with a heavy sigh, feeling sores surge all across my body and down the length of all my limbs. My head spun dizzily and my neck felt as if it had been plastered at a forty-five degree angle permanently. "Look, Shaun. I need your help. I have to get to her, Shaun...I can't live like this anymore, and I certainly can't go on without her. I need you to..." I sighed; was I being a dreamer again? "I need cash. Fast cash. She's gone back to New Jersey, and I need a ticket to board the train heading there....as soon as possible."

"If you need fast cash, you know how to get it, scab." He patted my cheek indifferently and started forth again, but I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt desperately and regarded him with pleading eyes.

"Please, Shaun. This one last favor...but for the benefit of something truly worth it this time..."

I'm not sure why he acquiesced. He had every reason to deny me. For one, he'd always hated me more than he loved me. Why should he care if I was in my time of need? Why should he reach out a brotherly hand when we were more so enemies than allies? Maybe the determination of my Romanticism persuaded him, maybe he simply wanted a break from his street life. Whatever the case, it was surreal when I found myself at the train yards, bidding farewell to the troubled teenager who'd taken me in when I'd nowhere to go in my early youth. He was still as foul, corrupt, and selfish as he was back then. I saw he cared nothing for me, and that he would crush my dreams in a second if such was his desire.

"I hope this stupid goose chase turns out alright so I don't have to ever see your ugly face in my territory again." And with that, he shoved me, turned around smoothly, and headed off for the city that had stolen his innocence.

I stand upon the stoop of her home, trembling with a fear beyond me. My clothes are wrinkled, frayed, and threadbare...my hair long and unkempt and my face truly that of an orphan who's never known true family. My shoelaces are untied and the flowers I grip tightly in my hand are wilting, red and white petals plummeting to the splintered wood of the steps. I swallow hard and close my eyes tight, praying feverishly for the wildest of all miracles to befall me.

Every step I take draws me closer to the love, the fear, the horror. What will she say upon seeing me? Will she accept me warmly into her home? Will she cast me out? How will her family react, they who knew me no more than as a liar? Will they let me explain? Offer me lodging in their home? Could everything work out one day? Would we embrace each other, or stand glaring?

Would she believe my professions of love and my outpourings of apology?

The very substance of ambition is but the shadow of a dream, my immortal literary mentor once said. This had all started with a dream...a dream to hold her, kiss her, love her, be with her always. It had fueled my ambition no doubt, leading me to the very place where I now stand. This is the stuff stars are made of: passion and all things pure and unadulterated. The moment we lose hope, so falls the stars. The moment we persevere even in the darkest of encampments, so do they burst with showers of illumination.

I will not falter.

I will not fail.

I take the final step, finally at the front door – the last obstacle that will ever stand between myself and the girl whom I love unceasingly. "Here's to love." Then bringing back a hand, I knock delicately and await my destiny.

And await my love.

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