How They Shine For You
written by ✧Aurora Lovecraft✧
Aurora Lovecraft's next short story revolves around the mysterious ways of the moon and stars and how much they may reveal about you - to others, as well as yourself. After all, a certain darkness is needed to see the stars and make a wish.
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
4
Reads
307
The Shooting Star.
Chapter 3
A sudden sparkling light in the west sky fails to evade my attention from the corner of my eye. I turn both my head and the telescope in the direction of its source, hoping to find it again. Nothing but tiny, intricate stars light years ahead. I feel so small knowing that within each one is a whole other solar system with even the fascinating possibility of life. My daydream is cut short when I see the same sort of light shooting down towards the horizon again ahead of me. A shooting star. I forcefully shake my head, fighting back the tears at the memory the star brings.
“Close your eyes, make a wish for the stars,” he’d say every time a shooting star would blaze through the sky.
“But Dad,” how defiantly I would say, “They’re just falling pieces of dirty rocks. They’re not even real stars!” 13-year old Celeste would refute, foolishly believing she could outsmart an astrophysicist.
I hear his laugh in the distance, exactly as I remember it.
“But look how it shines! Just for you!” He’d reply, bright eyes shimmering in the starlight as he would kneel down to my level, to my dark eyes still showing doubt. “Shine bright, Celeste. Shine brighter than a shooting star.”
I’m suddenly dragged back into the present, wishing I hadn’t wasted that wish. If I could, I’d wish you were here with me right now. I’d wish I'd never asked you to take me to the astronomy convention later that night. I’d wish that the speeding 18-wheeler would never have never crossed the front of our truck on the way.
I’d wish that you had become a shooting star instead. Maybe that way, I could follow your trail across the sky and bring you back.
As if teasing an answer to my wish, the crest of the horizon peeks out an orange glow of life. The signal of dawn and yet a new day before me. I gingerly unmount the telescope, placing it back into its case, as well as the tripod, the eyepieces, and everything else in the sack. Perhaps 13-year-old Celeste is in the midst of her return, handling everything with twice the care as I did hours before. As I head back towards the house across the field, I wave goodbye to one of the stars fading into the sunrise.
“Shine bright.”
