In the night sky the measuing unit between stars is the light year; the Milky Way between us that looks so deceptively narrow is actually many million light years away. If our hearts can close that distance I'm sure I'll be able to see you again for...
If you ever happen to be a bird, say a magpie, and you happen to be flying over the dusty islands of Eropagnis, you'll be able to see something weird.
In the outskirts, where the dust was thickest and people thinnest, stood a boy at the rocky bottom of a jagged peak, the top removed to reveal the red-hot vitality of the earth. The white of his father's lab coat fluttered like the twinkling of a distant star to this magpie twenty thousand miles above.
Somewhere further down southeast, the dust thins out as the crowd of buildings thicken, fingers of skyscrapers reaching out to the heavens. When twilight falls the shadows of these hands reach out across the Gem, waters like scattered stardust, a sparkling ribbon cutting Eropagnis in half.
The white of a young man's scarf caught this magpie's eyes as it passed by a stout building. The flash of the scarf burned in the dim classroom of this summer evening.
Fingering a loose thread, the young man receded deeper under the teacher's table and pulled his knees closer, resting his chin there, but never sleeping, never letting go from his eyes the trail of sunset.
And close by, this magpie saw the cascade of ashen hair, dipping, dancing as a girl bowed curtly, backing out of a classroom full of light, full of faceless people.
Enlightened, the white-haired girl ducked into the next classroom, where her light shone brightest in the dark emptiness, and never went out.
This magpie liked those three, for they were like bright and sparkly objects.
Normal eyes that prowl the ground cannot see this, but for this magpie, with the gift of flight, sees it.
It ascended, out of reach of the skyscrapers, so high that even the wind would take this magpie into its arms if it ever fell on this cloudless day.
If you happen to be a magpie, one thing you must definitely try is to look up.
Twilight came and went; this magpie twisted its body, and dared to look up.
The river Gem found its own reflection in the sky, but as it no longer sparkled at night its reflection blazed in its stead, a thousand, million, billion stars cutting the heavens in half, in a slim, jagged line as if made by raking the heavens with an angry hand a large hairpin.
Two bright specks of light stood on opposite banks of the stardust river, as if searching out for each other, equally alone. According to legend every once a year another bright star would be visible between them, bridging them together.
For centuries, navigators and travelers used stars as guides, and the ancient Greeks saw the same patterns as we do today, invisible lines joining each heavenly body together.
This magpie, too, saw. It saw the invisible lines connecting the white dots, no matter how far they were from this magpie, from this earth, and from each other.
"Branwen, aren't you supposed to be at the rehearsal?" A sharp authoritative voice cut through her reverie and forced her to ground, doing what bright light of the classroom failed to do.
"Oh. Ah...yes." She put one foot behind the other as she walked out the way she came, tucking her pale hair behind her ears. The filled tables each had a face hovering above it, and the faces all turned to look at her.
Branwen bowed and straightened in one swift motion before tottering away. Well, this classroom had people.
But the next didn't.
She skipped to the teacher's table before going down on all fours, banging her head on the side drawer before turning over to sit and inching under. Her vision swirled with stars, but she was okay. She hugged her knees together.
Ah, this feels much better.
One floor above, a slightly different voice, accented, spoke to the teacher's table.
"Wyman Aster, second in cohort?"
He looked up and stared, as if unable to place himself anywhere on this earth.
A flash of recognition passed in the sunset. "Yes." Wyman tugged on his muffler, stretched, stood up and strolled out from under the table. When he realized he wasn't followed, he turned to realize what one of the birds of the land thought of someone hiding under tables before a major school event.
He forced himself not to finger the loose thread.
Twenty thousand miles above, the magpie swam in the darkness. It couldn't see in the darkness that it was sandwiched between two brilliant shows of light, one of the heavens and one of man, and that like the constellations in the sky both named and unnamed invisible white threads connect the stars that walk on earth.
Twenty thousand miles away, the volcano howled its swan song for its only audience. Embittered, enraged, it shook the earth, scattering small pebbles past the dirty soles of its observer.
"Lucian."
His father ran, bearing his son's name upon his lips. Lucian looked over his shoulder, pulling his grave eyes away from the seismic performance. He bunched up the fabric of his lab coat in his fists, creasing the pure white with lines like cracks in the ground.
The look that passed between father and son was telepathic.
"Lucian."
Lucian's father settled the fluttering of his own lab coat that had flown up when he dashed across the village, ancient dust being kicked up.
"It's real."
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