The Impossibility of the Stars (Hiatus)

Prologue: Among the Clouds

The Impossibility of the Stars

"And at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells."

– The Little Prince

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The sky tonight is a brilliant indigo, freckled with pinpricks of light. Freckles like the ones scattered across my nose, indigo like my eyes.

It sounds silly, but I can feel a connection with the sky a times. At times my relation to it can feel like the only thing holding me together, because it is almost like a friend that knows me well and is always there, no matter what.

We are both passed over, glanced at briefly to remark that we are cloudless, or grumbled at that we're raining on someone else's fun. Really, people only think of the sky as a flat slab of blue, a tone-less overhang that droops above our heads.

Not me.

It is so much more. There is a fragile beauty, a delicacy to the sky, something about the colors, and the way the hues shift, gleam and meld together. Ever since I was little, I've been the only person to understand it.

The first time I came to this understanding, about how everyone else saw the sky, was in pre-school, the day we were learning our colors. We had a little field trip that day, out to the playground. I can still remember the tiny things, the ones that never feel important, and yet are the most memorable. That day I was clad in a gift, a navy blue sweatshirt too big for me, lined with soft white fuzz on the inside. I loved how cozy it was and insisted on wearing it, although Mom had protested. Earlier that day, during snack time, I'd had my graham cracker stolen by Ella, and had pretended not to notice, because, quite frankly, I was afraid of her, with her big arms and little, beady eyes. There was a rumor that she bit her dog's tail off when she was just a baby, and, gullible as I was, I believed it.

As we trekked dutifully across campus in our wobbly line, I was only partly listening to Ms. Cohen's explanation of the assignment. The rest of me was thinking about the treetops, and how when it was just a little bit foggy, as it was today, you could see them just sort of disappear into the mist. It was lovely, and I wished I could climb to the treetop and see if maybe the world beyond the fog was any different than this one.

"Deserae, are you listening to the instructions?" my teacher called out to me in a silky voice that was devoid of any actual kindness. Even at that age, her façade of the perfect teacher was practically transparent to me.

I nodded fiercely. "Yes, I listened."

She smiled sweetly, even as her eyes narrowed, and went on.

Our task was simple; to tell the teacher what the colors were when she asked us. The grass was green, the bench brown, the blacktop, well, black, the monkey bars fire truck red, and so on.

Then we got to the sky. "Okay, everyone, who can tell me what color the sky is?" Ms. Bellan asked in a sugar sweet voice that I despised. Annika's hand promptly shot up.

"Blue." She said simply.

"That's right, sweetie, good job!" The teacher replied, giving her a high five.

"Now, who knows what the swing-set's color is?" A few hands were raised, and she called on Mateo Two. But I wasn't listening. I was still stuck on the sky. My mind was spinning in an attempt to understand this, a new revelation to me. One that seemed so implausible, I wanted to laugh, or maybe even cry, as silly as it sounds.

Was there something wrong with me? No, there couldn't be. Something was wrong with Annika. How could anybody think that the sky was only a blue? It didn't make sense.

When I looked at the sky, I saw a blue, yes, one that started as a violet at the edges and slowly thinned out toward the center, lightening to almost sea foam green. White overtones were streaked over it, swirling into patterns like milk. Creeping in near the horizon were tinges of rose pink, crimson, and a deep purple like the eggplants Mom called Aubergines. That is what I saw, an effortlessly spectacular masterpiece, one that fixated my attention all the time. The beauty was right there, it was staring them in the face. I just couldn't, understand what others could be thinking...

How could anybody see the sky as nothing more than blue, nothing more than a single word?

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