Child of the Sky

Prologue

"Apple."

"Sorry, what?" A tall woman, not too young or old, stared dumbfounded at the man lying beside her in the soft grass of a beautiful clearing, not far from their newly bought house.

"We could call her Apple." Said the man, slightly shorter than her partner but strong in complexity, as if it was the most common thing to say.

"We're not calling our child Apple." She replied offendedly. "Why would you call your daughter Apple?"

"Dunno. I like apples." He just shrugged it off, lifting his view to the beautiful starry night, stars shining more than ever due to the lack of light pollution in the area. The nameless woman only hummed, seemingly in affirmation, while also staring at the sea of stars above them.

A moment passed in silence when he spoke again. "What about Alcyone?"

"Alcyone?" She asked, curious about his spontaneity. "Where did that come from?"

"One of the stars forming the constellation of Taurus. The brightest star in the Pleiades open cluster, also named after the mythological figures of the daughters of Atlas. Seems rather fitting, d'you think?" He stated matter of factly with a big grin on his face.

Her partner stared at her in awe, still not used to the fact spit he sometimes did at the most random moments, and glanced up again in wonder.

"Alcyone." She only said in a whisper, a small smile already forming on her lips. "I like it."

✦

From the moment Alcyone Hart knew where her name came from, she had immediately sprinted to his father's immense library, grabbed the first book with the word "star" on it, and decorated with shiny golden dots on its cover. She hadn't understood a single sentence in the first pages of the book, but her dad had found her −with a deep frown trying to understand those strange combinations of letters− and proceeded to explain to her 6-year-old daughter.

"You're named after a star, Aly. The brightest of its constellation." He had said. "Y'see, sometimes stars group together, and when they do, they form drawings in the sky. Yours, specifically, creates a silhouette of a bull, like the ones from Greek mythology."

"So they're like a family?" Little Alcyone had asked, curious. His father had chuckled at her innocence, rubbing her hair affectionately.

"You could say that. They stay together after millions of years existing in unison, so in a way, they end up being like family."

"But," There was something her little brain couldn't understand, so much information thrown at her in minutes it was hard for her to follow. "I don't see drawings when I stare up at the sky at night, only shiny dots." She had asked with a pout, upset she couldn't see a bull in the sky.

Her father had only smiled at her before kissing her head and leaving her with her thoughts.

✦

It took her a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy to understand it, but at that point, she had already known she wanted to study celestial objects and their behavior, probably influenced by her father's countless rants about what was beyond Earth and the Milky Way.

It hadn't been easy, since she had had to move homes several times in her young life, and therefore, interrupting her studies; however, her passion for astronomic phenomena and what could be out there kept her motivated until she could almost name every star she saw. It wasn't her goal, though, but she remembered how her dad always bragged about knowing every sparkly dot's name and found it a fun challenge to have.

The day she achieved it, her father wasn't around anymore. Although if he had been, he would've told her in a teasing voice: "It's impossible you know every star's name in the whole universe, even I probably don't know them all. But there are always opportunities to learn new things, so you should keep researching and annotating everything interesting to you; who knows when you might need that information."

And so she did. Every time she would discover something new, she'd sit on the grass in her backyard and stare up at the dark sky, talking to her father wherever he was and sharing it with him. Deep down, she knew his words had always had a double meaning as if there was something he knew about the future but couldn't tell her yet. But she believed in him, and so, she waited for the moment to come.

─

Hi hi, so it's been a while since I've written any fanfic or anything at all. I'm aware I have a started story but currently, I'm out of motivation for that one so it'll have to stay on hold :") BUT I'm currently watching Doctor Who and recently read a wonderful fanfic (which you should totally read) called "Heart of the Storm" by Sonny13 on fanfiction.net, I took quite some inspiration from it and actually motivated me to write my own story with my OC and her adventures.

So here's a small prologue I hadn't intended to write in the first place but ideas suddenly came to my mind and now here we are, I hope it created enough hype to anticipate coming episodes I'll be writing :) though, I'm a uni student so I apologize in advance for irregular or slow updates, I'll try my best to post consistently since I'm very excited about this story.

Hope you enjoy it, first ep will be up between tomorrow and Friday!