Love Like Stars

hi. sorry. final chapter.

This makes me feel like I'm trying to make it seem like I'm famous or something and I'm really not, but also I feel like if someone in the future does stumble across this, then they should know why I disappeared. 

Hi. My name is Ali, and I'm a rising freshman in high school now. When I joined Wattpad and first started writing fanfiction, I was in fifth grade and very alone. Feeling detached from myself and the few friends I had, connecting with people online over the two things I enjoyed, reading and writing, was my form of healing and self-love. 

I've received nothing but positive attention and feedback from writing Lunar Chronicles fanfiction here, and I'm super glad that I've been able to have that experience. I still get email notifications from Wattpad every time somebody leaves a comment on one of my pieces, and I still get little heart jitters every time I read them. 

However, throughout the three years that I've been in middle school, and reflecting just before high school now, I've come to realize that my friends and the positive and negative experiences have changed me from the writer that these readers may have known before. 

I also think that making the time to reread the Lunar Chronicles and bathe in that nostalgia has made me realize how much I've changed. 

I still love the Lunar Chronicles and Marissa Meyer's beautifully eloquent writing style. I still love Prince Kai, and I still love writing. Somewhere inside, I'm still eleven holding my brand new computer on my lap, typing out the words that make me happy. I have that same computer on my lap today, I still have Cinder and Scarlet by my bedside, but I know that I'm happier than before. 

Again this makes it sound like there's people that care, but I still think I should let whoever stumbles upon this know. 

My purpose for writing Atlanta was to create my own edition to the Lunar Chronicles while there were still open ends. My purpose for writing Love Like Stars was to add my own piece to the Lunar Chronicles. Believe it or not, I tried to recreate Marissa Meyer's way of speech and style (though that obviously didn't happen), and I was obsessed with making my fanfiction perfect down to every detail. It was a weird obsession, but I wanted to write the kind of fanfiction that could readily be canon if Marissa Meyer decided to take it in. It was my sixth grader's mindset that kept me going and grounded. Eventually that obsession bore me out to a point though. I got scared because I couldn't keep up with every canon detail that arose about Cinder, Kai, Iko, and all the other characters that I had grown to love, and I didn't want to add onto a piece that wasn't perfect. 

Aside from the fears and the perfectionism that I couldn't quite perfect, I simply want to focus the remaining time that I have towards writing my own original pieces that can make people just as happy as my fanfictions.  (This makes it sound like I'm on the brink of death or something, but I'm just freakishly busy for no good reason)

I'm currently working on several pieces with artistic freedom, where I don't have to be perfect, where I don't have to be accurate. Maybe someday, I hope, that those pieces will make it into your hands, and you'll somehow realize that the creator of that piece was the girl that wrote Lunar Chronicles fanfiction. The prettypengirl with 78 followers on Wattpad. 

So my hiatus isn't a hiatus anymore, I suppose. 

It's a final end to much too long of a wait. 

For those who enjoyed my fanfiction and never got a real ending, I'm sincerely sorry, because I always hated the fanfiction writers that never finished their stories. 

So for those that stuck around, here is at the very least, an ending. 

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There's something about weddings that are surreal. Ethereal. Unrealistically perfect. 

Whether it's the decorations or the suspended moment of a loved one walking down an aisle to be met by their one and only, there is something about weddings that are surreal. Ethereal. Unrealistically perfect. 

"That's how all weddings work. Unrealistically perfect. Like, it won't last," Cinder wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. The one that would meet her at the end of the aisle was sitting at the end of her bed. 

Moments like these, Cinder wondered what in the world he was thinking. Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth, sitting at the foot of her bed. He had a blank, pondering expression on his face, and with his body leaning back, propped up on the bed by his arms. Time like this, she realized like a blow to the head that he was still only twenty. 

She was eighteen. 

"Then I'll last for you." His voice was absentminded, an automatic response, something granted. 

"What?" He was still sitting there, but looking at her now, his eyes gone all soft, a strand of hair cutting across the middle of his face, brushing his nose. 

"I'll make it last. Decorate our room like it's a wedding every day. I can buy you endless wedding dresses. You can wear a tiara. I'll love you like it's the first and last time forever." He grinned his easy grin, the one that turned his eyes into beautiful little half-moons, the one that was so sweet it was borderline silly, and Cinder felt her heart skip a beat and drop all the way to her stomach. 

"Do I get kisses every day?" 

"You can have one every moment if you want." He said it simply. Nonchalantly. He wasn't trying to be romantic. Just saying what came to his head. 

Cinder bit down on the inside of her lip to keep from smiling too wide. If she could cry she probably would have. If she could blush she would be bright read. But all that showed that she was so madly in love that she felt like she could jump off a building was the green text across her vision that read the spiking levels of hormone and endorphins and adrenaline in her body, and that only she could see. 

"And you wouldn't get sick of me?" Her smile was escaping. She was losing her calm. 

"You could tie my ankle to yours and I would thank you. You can superglue my hand to yours and I would be grateful, because I get to hold it all day." He took her hand in his gently. Cinder almost flinched, because this was her cyborg hand, the cold one. The metal one. 

"I like these small moments. They feel like forever." Cinder whispered. 

"I'll be your forever." Kai winked, his entire face scrunching at the effort. It made Cinder laugh, her hand still in his, thumb gently stroking the polished metal. 

He took the other one too, holding them both in his lap, staring down at them fondly. The metal hand and the one that never got completely clean, even after scrubbing and scrubbing with the Imperial Palace's soap. The human hand with the bitten down fingernails and the nicks and scratches from whatever it was she was toying with. Her hands would never be the soft, manicured hands that she saw of the other pretty girls. They made her feel vulnerable and raw. 

But Kai's heart still skipped a beat every time he saw the engagement ring that glistened on her hand. 

The corners of his mouth lifted again, and he brought each of Cinder's hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles gently. 

"Have I ever told you that your hands are beautiful? I can hold them every day now. Forever." 

It was probably the most romantic thing he had ever said to her. 

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