Beyond the Galaxy

Chapter 1 - The First Ray of Starlight

Isabelle's Point of View

It was a lovely day to start thinking of the future for the rest of my life.

But then again, whenever such a thought ever crossed my mind, I often found that I contradicted myself. What classified as one's future? Was it even still the future when it was sooner to be the present? The future was not the present moment that required immediacy and well-paced strategy to advance through life's challenges, and so what reason did I have to care?

After all, the future was only determined by the present. Nothing in this universe happened by accident. Everything I was today was because of the choices I made five, six, even seven years ago. With an unshakable belief in myself and the right intention, I came back from everything that had tested my strength over the years.

I had once almost gone weak at the knees at the thought of failure or of a future where I would never make it in the world, never putting out my own name enough times to be genuinely remembered, and I came back. I once advanced through life with no known purpose and hardly any financial value to my name, and I came back. I once had my life twisted under the control of others who claimed to have nothing more than my best interest at heart, and I came back. And so that was why I cared.

But why did it mean so much to me now? Why was the uncertainty of the future that still lay before me the first thought to tumble into my head as I tore myself from sleep in the fragile hours of the early morning? No longer than five months ago, I had turned the intimidating age of twenty-five and had so much life ahead of me but no idea how to fulfill it. I'd made immense progress in my lifetime to be where I was today, that much was clear, but life went on. Life didn't have endings like some kind of storybook and there was still progress to be made. But how?

This question, in the countless times I had asked myself, was one of the most unpredictable and thrilling thoughts that ever crossed my mind. Something about this question set off a whirring like a coiling ball of fire in my chest with the gripping urge to provoke some kind of change in my life. Something about this question slipping into my head in the first moments of the new day launched me up and out of bed at the rhythmic chime of my alarm clock at seven o'clock sharp in order to prepare for work, seeming to latch a tireless motor to my heels as I dressed. I buttoned up a salmon-colored Nook Inc. branded t-shirt, yanked up a pale skirt that fell a couple inches higher than my knees, and slipped on a pair of brown flats that clicked my way across the hard floors of my house to get some breakfast.

The soft light of morning danced through the spacious rooms by the time I emerged from my bedroom. The steady rhythm of confidence clung to my steps as I crossed the main room on my way to the kitchen, heels tapping against the marble flooring with the usual twinkle of light catching on the chandelier hanging several feet above me. The day had begun like any other, wrapped in the very image of elegance that sunk into me and flooded my senses, but I hardly blinked at it now. One would predict that a spacious house like this would become lonesome with a single resident, but lonely was a word I couldn't truthfully describe myself with. With the journey that lay trampled behind me, I rose gracefully to the title and filled the space with my presence alone. I wouldn't change a thing.

Fragile sunlight pooled over the floor of the kitchen as the crackling of cooking eggs broke through the silence. I pursued several tasks at once, checking back on the progress of the eggs finding shape in the pan and carving a sandwich I had prepared for my lunch into the image of a wide heart. An identical routine leading my mornings perfected the stroke of my knife over time. I neatly packed the sandwich into a bento box with a sliced apple and a small brownie for dessert and tossed it into a red striped lunch bag before the eggs were cooked at last.