Specks Of Dust [Kaylor]

A Stellar Declaration

It was now officially the 30th of October. The last Friday of the month.

I was in English class; the last period of the day.

Our assignment was to describe a moment, a single moment in time as strongly as possible.

I, being a slightly naïve child, chose a sunset.

I looked around the classroom, searching for some sort of inspiration.

Coincidentally, I looked a Taylor at once.

She was leaning back in her chair, presumably finished with her moment.

I built up a bit of confidence and reached over and tapped her on the shoulder, hoping not to scare her.

She looked back at me, with no sign of surprise. It was more like she'd been waiting for me to talk to her.

There it goes, that bit of confidence, drowning in oceans.

"I, ummm...how d'you describe a sunset?" I whispered, hoping not to attract the teacher's attention.

"You know, 'vibrant, beautiful, elegant, powerful'. The usual stuff." She answered, a small smile following.

"Thanks." I said, my voice feeling quieter than a breath.

I handed in the moment I had described as soon as I was done. Class was dismissed nearly immediately after.



Of course, perhaps it would have been wise to think of exactly what I was going to wear before the day of the actual event itself.

I had thrown together a strange suggestion from Taylor and, surprisingly, it had actually worked.

It was a blue onesie with googlie eyes on the hood.

In short, I was the cookie monster.

Surprisingly, my mother said nothing against it.

Well, she did shoot me a strange look when she first saw the costume, and I had to put some effort into ignoring it.

She technically didn't say anything, though.




I had told Taylor I'd meet her around six in front of the school.

Last time we'd agreed to meet somewhere, she had been barely late. This time, we both seemed to be early.

I glanced at my watch before looking at her again as the bus drove past the school to the bus stop a few feet away. She was a blur of red fuzz and blond hair and maybe, just perhaps a flash of oceans.

Yeah, we were both there at quarter to six.

The unpunctuality of the moment was no issue, though. She hugged me immediately when she saw me approaching her.

We broke the hug for a second and her eyes flashed over my costume for a second as she cracked a grin.

"You look pretty awesome." She commented.

I checked her costume out for a second and couldn't help returning the smile when I recognized what it was supposed to be.

The girl had honestly dressed up in an Elmo onesie.

"Dude, matching costumes. Nice." I laughed.

"So, you want to come inside?" She asked, gesturing at the looming building that was our school with a nod.

I walked alongside her.



I lost Taylor in the blur of too loud music and too many people.

Whatever warmth I had felt, it was replaced now by anxiety.

Well, not really anxiety.

Total and utter panic, to be specific.

I recognized only fleeting faces in the mass, like that of Addison from my class, or Joshua from senior year.

Nothing else in this chaos seemed remotely familiar to me.

It almost felt as if time meant nothing here, it was simultaneously going to quickly and too slowly.

If I'd had a watch, I wouldn't have been surprised if the seconds were moving backwards.

I recognized the only option was to get out of there before a stampede broke out.



I navigated my way back out of the crowded room and stumbled into the hallway, nearly slamming the door behind me. It was probably inaudible, anyway.

A sort of dizziness gripped me as I struggled not to trip over my own blue-onesie-covered legs.

"Holy shit, Karlie, are you ok?" I felt arms support me from behind.

She'd followed me out.

I felt too distracted by other senses to answer her.

I managed to support myself on something other than Taylor's body and turned to face her.

"Why'd you come out?" I asked. She'd obviously been pumped to come to this thing, and guilt washed through me when I realized that I may have just pulled her out of a lot of fun.

She wrinkled her nose. "It's too loud in there. The music is ok, but it's no Sarah MacLachlan, you know?"

"So what d'you want to do now?" I checked a clock on one of the hallway walls. A surprising half an hour had passed in there.

I had to write to various songwriters, because apparently, time doesn't only fly when you're having fun.

"We could go sit outside." She suggested. I saw through a window that the sun was rather low, casting everything in an orange light.

"I'd like that." I replied, my mind somewhere else.



We were lying on the grassy hill outside of the school. As the sun sank deeper into the distant landscape, Taylor and I lay in silence until she spoke up.

"Feels pretty vibrant, beautiful, elegant, powerful, huh?"

I looked over to her, seeing a smile playing on her lips. Laughing at that moment was something I genuinely couldn't help.

"I'd say something more along the lines of 'orange', to be honest." I tried to make my voice casually deadpan.

"Yeah, that sounds much more poetic, doesn't it?" She propped herself up on her right elbow to look over to me.

"Well, it sounds more like the type of word that English teachers in a century would pester their students about." She slipped into a strange voice that sounded suspiciously like the English literature professor. "No, no, class! The orange is supposed to represent a mixture of the yellow of a ray of sunshine and the red colour of the poor workers' blood!"

I doubled over.

The tinyest amount of sun that was still left disappeared for good, announcing that we were now officially in the twilight zone.

A rainbow of colour was spread across the sky, with little stars twinkling in the deep blue distance.

"You know, twilight lasts two hours on Mars." Taylor rippled the silence with another melodic sequence of words.

"No kidding." I raised my eyebrows.

"Yeah, it's true. Little Wall-E over there enjoys twice as much of this view as we do."

I paused to think for a second.

"You're not talking about the Mars rover, are you?"

"I am talking about the Mars rover."

"Okay."

A blanket of stars took the place of tthe plethora of colours which had minuted ago been dominant. We continued leading a discussion about Wall-E.

"No, I swear, it's against overconsumerism! There's just so much proof in the movie about it!" Taylor argued.

"But an anti-overconsumerism message from Disney? That's like....I don't know...it's in its own complete category of irony!"

I was beginning to get into the discussion, when Taylor just lay back and stopped answering.

"What's up?" I aasked, concerned.

She gestured upwards with her head.

My heart might've skipped a beat, if that were possible.

Swirls and fragments of light had been bent in different shapes to create the image that hung above us.

I only remembered to breath when my mind was screaming for air.

"It's inspirational, isn't it?" She asked.

I frowned. It may have been stunning, it may have been awesome, but inspirational?

"It's demotivational." I decided.

"Why would you say that?" Taylor invited to me to continue.

"I mean, it's all just so unbearably large, the universe and everything. Next to that, whatever we do in a lifetime, the very essence of humanity, it's just nothing. It's like humans are all just..."

I hesitated, searching for the right expression.

"Specks of dust." I decided.

Taylor's eyes glazed over, a wistful look in them.

She pushed herself off of the ground and stood there for a second before yelling.

"Hey, universe!" She screamed.

"Here's a speck of dust whose decisions are going to influence you a lot, so you better prepare yourself for a fucking rebellion!"



I think that that was the moment, actually.

That was the moment I started realizing exactly how important Taylor Swift was to me.


Sure, "vibrant, beautiful, elegant, and powerful" were good words to describe some sunset happening somewhere else right now.

However, now, in a ballroom of stars, with my friend in an Elmo costume screaming threats up at the universe itself, the only words to describe this moment were goddamn perfect.