Looking up at the Stars

Write a story that begins and ends with someone looking up at the stars. I gazed upward at the humble night sky. One of the few things that I still enjoyed. I wonder what is up there. All my vain midnight dreams…All my dumb wishes…All my ignorant hopes. I let my sluggish head sink down to my hands rested on the dirty white windowsill doing anything but wondering themselves in a vulgar fantasy. I could just hear my dad, versing all my dreams scientifically. That starts were a lot more than a glance at a distant dream. They were galaxies, gatherings of gas much larger than our sun. Stupid. I was so stupid. But hey, a girl can dream, right? I won’t tell you my name, that only highlights it like the comet that I am names after. The comet that only is visible for a short time to a human’s naked eye from earth. It doesn’t even come that much to the humble, meek eye that often, twice in a lifetime, my astronomy teacher, Ms. Hashway always told me. I grinned as I thought of her funny, quirky attitude at all times, even in the middle of a lecture on how unlikely it was that an asteroid should ever reach earth. The class’s eyes all grew when she described what would happen when one of the space rocks reached the surface, but none could match her huge magnified dark brown eyes behind her own ginormous lime green spectacles outlined with stars, almost as if she came to earth on an asteroid recently and still had remnants of stardust from her own explosion. (It could happen, as Mr. George had explained to his class in a steady, monotonous voice perfect for a horror movie just last year.) I tried to shake those thoughts away too. “Halles, are you still out there?” I heard my father’s voice from inside our apartment, awakening me from my daydream, or rather, daymare. I quickly looked at my cracked pink fingernails, I couldn’t be caught gazing at and wondering about the stars, or else he could go on and on, should I come out. A split second later I heard our sliding door, confirming my previous prediction. “Hey, dad.” I greeted him, not daring to let my aquamarine eyes separate from my pink fingernails, as if they feared something, because they were, bluntly (well, hopefully, not that bluntly). Soon I felt his arm, much bigger than the back of his little girl that I was (well, I was only seen twice in a lifetime). My father, Jules Whitford looked and acted his part of a father perfectly, with his dark hair, face covered with a stubble of facial hair as if he always forgot the little things, but that didn’t mean that he was forget full of the important things, and willing enough and strong enough to do anything for me, my little brother, Alex, or especially my mother, Camille Schefter Whitford with her light brown hair just reaching past her ears but she was still the most beautiful thing in the world to him, whether she decided she liked or hated him that day or not. I knew she was mad at him that day, no matter how much his face tried to hide it. (Afterall, our apartment was not that large anyway.) “Isn’t it so wonderful to be out here, with all of this?” he asked, kissing my head. I should have seen this one coming. He was trying to distract himself. I would have rolled my dark eyes that matched his if I were not used to this process already. I may have not wanted to talk about the night sky a second ago, but right now my father needed something that had to give him so his life could have just a little light, no matter how pretty he thought my mother was (I seriously didn’t know what he was talking about, with her frazzled hair not from anything intended to be romantic or relaxing). “I wonder when the next time is that we’ll see my comet again.” I said, trying to sound as bright as a firefly. His arms now matched mine in the sluggish stance over the railing. He had a little grin at me. That obviously did not work. He hunched his back even more, which looked ridiculous; almost as if he belonged on the Notre Dame bell towers ringing the bells with the vain angels and husky goblins. He closed his eyes, as if he were tired of me before replying, “Halley, my star-girl, it isn’t coming back for a really long time. I doubt that I’ll even be alive the next time that we see it.” I sighed. That was worth a shot. I wondered how my little brother; Alex was doing right now. If he was comforting my mother right now, as he should have been during this glum night. I almost wished that a surprise asteroid would hit the earth that night, despite whatever the rest of my class might think. Spare me the judgment, it did not matter to me anymore. Just wait till it is worse tomorrow. 

 Odhe took a big breath in his big world of the universe. He honestly did not know why his father, Aehmears had to bring him to work today. It wasn’t even “take your son” to work day, or whatever those less educated planets that didn’t even know how to travel faster than the speed of light, or how to reserve all your energy so well that you never had to sleep. Odhe did not even know if it was day or night right now, but he rested his head on the little silver ledge in front of him. He wished that his mother, Zalga had convinced his father to let him stay on the last planet for one more day, and help her finish checking the Conall Worms which they had just barely started growing the other month ago. If she had done this, he knew that he could have stayed home. She was much more practiced at making her large purple eyes the most convincing things in the universe. Odhe had inherited her purple eyes, but he was not old enough or practiced enough to make people fall in a swoon on command. It was ridiculous. He honestly wondered what it was like to make a pitstop at a certain planet or galaxy long enough to make friends, or to know what it really felt like to walk into the sunset (whatever that was, he had only read about them in books at an ultra-fast alien speed). That was what he was. An alien. Too intelligent, too smart, too weird. He sighed so big again, it could have started a hurricane on one of the humble planets that they were passing. “How are you doing Odhe? It is a beautiful universe, isn’t it?” Odhe was startled at first. He jolted to a straight back again. His father couldn’t ever catch him relaxing; he didn’t try to imagine how many centuries that he would be grounded to the seat he was in. He tried to sound exuberant as he answered him, “So beautiful…I sometimes wonder what it is like to be on one of those other planets.” Aehmears was stunned for a split second (Odhe had obviously said too much). He was straighter than usual before bursting into his alien way of laughing, that sounded more like hyperventilating, or gagging, the normal way for his extraterrestrial race. His son slumped his body in his curved seat a bit, not sure how he was supposed to react. “Oh, Odhe, you really had me going there for a second. How could anyone always moving at unimaginable speeds ever dream of going slow again? I left that thought in the past, a million millennia ago, but it is nice to laugh occasionally. Funny joke.” Odhe just shrunk into his seat even more, wishing he would disappear, the deepest parts of his soul not caring that he was just told that he should define his dreams as something else. He was too old for dreams, but he would still dream forever, no matter what. Luckily, one of the crewmen grabbed his father’s attention in the next second, robbing his son of something that he wanted to have stolen. “Aehmears, sir, we have spotted another inhabited planet. We are coming right on it. Permission to attack?” Odhe had his own thoughts hit him like lightning. He quickly looked out his window at the rush of stars and planets, praying to some imaginary being from some of his books called God, or Elohim, or Jehovah (and they think things are confusing up in space) that they would stay inhabited at this planet for a bit longer. It was Aehmears’ turn to speak, interrupted his son’s instantaneous hopes, it was more of a yell, “What are you waiting for, Lonad? Attack!” “Just like all the other ones.” Odhe whispered mutely. If his father heard him, he gave no indication, since that would take some of his precious infinity of time. There was no time to waste on things like caring for your son who dreamt of other things than reality way too much. If it was even possible, he slumped even deeper into his seat. He knew everything that was going to happen next, so he didn’t even bother wondering, like a Skitters in the field on the planet Jardins a few galaxies away (at least he thought that was what it was called) (it is hard to think when you are always going at such a baffling speed as him, his father, or the crew were going). He wished he would disappear. It was not like anyone would truly have time to miss him. He gave a giant sigh again, neither expecting nor receiving any attention about it.