TG Tale - Wish Upon The Falling Star

Wish Upon The Falling Star

Ten years ago

The cold December night sky was a tapestry of blinking white dots, painting pitched, ancient, battles against a backdrop of pure obsidian. It was a night that none should forget, but only a few remembered. At the end of a sleeping suburban street, high up in the attic of his aging wooden house, sat Jake, who was watching the constellations through a borrowed telescope. He was eight years old, a fact he was incredibly proud of, and frequently introduced himself as, and then name, if he remembered to name himself at all. 

Frost was creeping across the glass, tinting the cracking paint a bright, glassy, white.

Now Jake should have gone to bed many hours earlier, his parents sure had, but there was something about that night's sky that was calling to him. The allure of the unknown, the chasm of emptiness was open to him, and curious, he couldn't help but throw himself into studying it. The astronomical gains however, of an enthusiastic but equally unskilled eight year old, weren't particularly spectacular. He did have one thing going for him in that department, he could recognize when a huge hunk of rock was hurtling toward the Earth.

It was a meteor, impacting in fire and flame somewhere up by Pike's ridge, a rocky outcrop over the hill that deflected the sound entirely in the direction of farm country. No one for a thousand miles would have heard the explosion it made, nor seen the light streaking across the sky. No one but Jake. The boy had been sat wild eyed watching the whole event, a sense of adventure burgeoning from within. He'd read the stories, and he'd heard the tales, of the heroes, who were sat doing very much the same thing he had been, relaxing after a hard day's work of drinking from a juice box and swinging on the swing. He knew his destiny lay out there, and there was no way he was going to let a locked door stop him. 

A real adventurer might not have taken so long to tie his bootlaces, but all the same he climbed onto his ten speed bike and pedalled as fast has his knees would allow, in the direction of the town sign, then past into corn country, a sharp left, tyre skid, and then up the hill. The air was thick with the smell of burnt and burning, cracks and snaps burst from flame affected foliage. He was close.

Two eyes peeped over the top of the ridge, he was too scared to look, besides, he knew how to be stealthy too. From what he could gather, whatever had landed was no meteorite, it was a metallic looking, smooth as lace, egg. But in his mind, that was exactly what was bound to have fallen to earth, a weird looking egg, probably with a cosmic chicken living inside. There was no movement whatsoever, and so, after a while, he managed to build the confidence to stumble down the steep slope, and reach the crashed oddity.

His clothes were ruined already, grass stains up the back and mud on the knees, more so 

than a week of playing in the back yard. This meant that he took no extra steps to avoid a mire of marshy ground at the foot of the confusing contraption. Crawling forward, he willed himself to reach out, and to touch the surface of the craft. Only when he did, an infinite brightness burst forth in a perfect rectangle and fear cracked like a whip through his small frame, the small boy backed off quicker than he'd have thought himself capable of.

The white rectangle grew, until it was completely hollow, the brilliance still spewing out. And into this frame, came a silhouetted figure, black on white, who stepped forward once, and then twice. Jake was in no position to hide, and so he watched with naked awe, muscles completely still, and eyes as wide as the moon. The steps continued, another, and another, until he could make out the features of his new companion. Seven feet tall, hairless, and clad in white robes, it was impossible to tell whether they were a man or a woman. More steps, until it reached Jake, and then an angelic voice whispered.