Dashes in Your Stars (One-shot)

Live The Magic

WHY DO ALWAYS the most beautiful moments just eventually turn into a sudden fear?

"A group of poachers caught on act." A statement I heard from the radio that echoes inside my car. This is the day that I decided to turn my life around, complete those stars and accomplish the dream of my childhood but what I heard sounds like a total nightmare. Why must the past be painfully haunting all the time? That's just unfair. I immediately turned the radio off. My first thought on the news made my heart flutter and my stomach shiver.

They are fine, right?

I needed an answer but the news is never the answer I want nor the answer I deserve. That is more than what I can accept. I may lack assurance and be full of desperation but I have hope. They said they can handle themself but still, it didn't stop me from worrying a little bit too much because the chances of them being hunted by those poachers are low, but never zero. While my hands were shaking and my legs trembling, I pulled over. And before I knew it, heavy rain of sorrows flooded my very eyes, escaping their way to the light.

How terrible is it to hold something close to your heart that death could touch?

The fragments of my recollection can still recall the adventure of a lifetime that I already considered happened a thousand lightyears ago. In which the life before me could never surpass and the next couldn't even begin to imagine possible.

What they say is true, memory is the worst kind of torture.

I WAS ONCE a barista at Starbucks and it is indeed a dream come true. Indulging the aroma of coffee while inhaling the fresh breath of the morning; an everyday scene that seems like it came straight from a movie. It was a great job...at first. Well, honestly, the first few months were amazing. People came to order and I'm here to give them what they want.

Then, it keeps repeating. And repeating. And repeating.

Suddenly, I cannot stop. It became a routine. A time loop. I needed money to survive so I kept living like this—if you call that living. Working here gives me nothing but a paycheck. Nothing new comes to my life, nothing different and nothing changed.

And that's when I realize...I'm stuck.

Not until that fateful night. That evening when the universe conspired and proved to me that sometimes, magic often comes from the mundane.

WHILE SITTING ON A SWING at a children's playground, I watch as the night begins to glow. It's December. A month when the night is more alive than the day. I witness everyone living their best lives: children singing Christmas carols and people being happy with their peers. I heaved a sigh, accepting that I am at the majority that don't belong in the grandest scheme of all. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Already embracing the life I am stuck into, I smiled into oblivion.

Once again, I heaved a sigh wishing I'm a child again. I looked up at the sky that's been polluted by the glittering stars and locked my gaze at the biggest one, reaching my hand knowing it was impossible. How lonely must the sky be without the stars who make it shine. I used to believe when I was a child that when a wish and a star become one, nothing can separate them until the end of times. If I pick a star and make it mine, my dreams will come true when the morning comes. But I am not a child anymore. I know better.

A star won't make my wish come true.

But even so, I stayed; knowing there isn't wrong in believing in something bigger than myself.

HERE I AM in my little unorganized room, looking at photos of me with incomplete teeth and untainted innocence. I find comfort and joy in the days of my childhood simply because I see it as a magical time of my life. I decided to look through all my belongings and I stumbled upon a familiar notebook. I opened it only to regret every decision I made in my life.