There was a time when my brother and I spent entire nights staring upwards, trying to wrap our heads around the idea that those shining balls of fire in the sky have been hanging there since the first human thought to look up and wonder what they were. That this place we live is just another one of those countless tiny dots. That our lives, though they looked and felt so much larger than the distant lights, were unimaginably small in comparison.
Once, on a clear, moonless night – a night when the sky was a vast sea of endless darkness pierced by brilliant lights; a night when we could see the entire universe from our sleeping bags on a worn-out trampoline – my brother asked me if I’d ever felt the urge to reach up into that twinkling infinity, pull a star from its depths and press it against my chest.
“Just one,” he said. “It’s not being too greedy to take just one star, is it? There are so many. Hundreds and thousands. Millions and billions. Surely, the night sky could spare just one star, just long enough for a single speck of dust amongst hundreds of thousands, millions and billions, to hold its light, feel its warmth and know that it existed.”
Maybe you haven’t felt that urge. Maybe to you, the night sky is just that, and the stars that fill it are just balls of gas burning from too far away and for too long for them to ever be of any concern or consequence. Maybe, on those rare nights that the lights from the city, the road, and the house don’t wipe away any trace of the vast expanse that exists outside of our little world, you, like most people, don’t even look up. I know that I don’t. Not anymore. But when my brother asked me that question, all those years ago, I knew exactly what he meant.
I had forgotten that desire, to break the barrier of size. To reach into space and pull a piece of it down into my arms. I forgot it until tonight, when I awoke from my dream of a warm day, ringing pleasantly with the laughter of my brother and I as we played Jedi in the backyard, and the loneliness of months spent in stuffy isolation crashed over me, sending me out into the brisk, cold night. It was then that I looked up for the first time in who-could-remember-how-long, and for an instant, found myself wrapped in my sleeping bag on that ratty old trampoline, listening to my brother’s quiet breaths beside me as he waited for my response.
My hand reached upwards, into that sky of endless embers, wanting to press just one against my chest. To hold its light, feel its warmth, and know that I existed.
“It’s not being too greedy to take just one star, is it?” I whispered to the cold, boundless night.
Story By Dylan Foster
Illustration By Emma Boobar