Written in the Stars || Sean and Kaycee

1. The Brightest Star

Sean Lew

There is a girl outside of my window.

She has eyes like the moon, unassumingly luminescent against the darkness of the night. Her milk-white hands carve through the open space like a shooting star, agile but barely perceptible. A nebula of stardust trails her every movement, like a comforting blanket of obscurity that highlights her ethereal frame. Her hair falls gently around her like a comet's tail, its fine strands of woven light cascading over her shoulders.

Is it just me, or does the world seem to revolve around her? She breathes in her surroundings and breathes out the soft hush of a whispering breeze. She holds the universe in the palm of her hand, cradling it gently even as it slips out of her tenuous grasp. She weaves destiny in and out of her nimble fingers until it becomes a masterpiece of her own creation.

This is no ordinary girl.

This girl is the sun and the planets around it. She is powerful. She is blinding.

She is the brightest star that I've ever seen.

My pencil etches a faint outline of her figure onto the grubby pages of my sketchbook, doing absolutely no justice to her beauty. My eyes squinting in concentration, I try to capture the details of her boundless curls. Her lithe arms. Her pixie-like nose. As if I could store her image in my memory forever. As if the molecules of her being could translate onto the piece of paper in front of me until she came alive. 

Is it crazy to stare at a stranger and dream these things? Maybe. But then again, I am going insane in this jail cell. Day by day, my brain has deteriorated to the point that sometimes I can't remember who I am or how I got here. Reality has morphed into a dream, and dreams have become my only reality. I don't even know what I'm fighting for anymore. A cause that was lost before it even began? A past that never was? A future that never can be?

The sketch starts to take form. I brush lead shavings and eraser bits off of the sketchbook page, squinting to assess its accuracy. Not bad. It's almost lifelike... but not quite. There's something missing.

I glance out of my window again, eager to get another look at her. She's now sitting on the concrete bench right underneath my window. She's taking in her surroundings with a keen, calculating eye, as if she could see deeper than the shapeless tumbleweed garden and the monotonous stone entryway to the prison.

The girl stands up and brushes a leaf off of her muddy white blouse, dusting off her camouflage cargo pants. Running her hand through her tangled mess of curls, she lets out a frustrated moan, looking up at the stars above as if they held the answers to questions that had not yet been asked.

I realize, a second too late, that she's squinting at my window. My cheeks redden involuntarily.

She somehow seems to pick up on my embarrassment. Her head swivels toward me, eyes boring straight into my soul.

I smile at her nervously.

She scowls back, her brow furrowed in vexation.

My breath fogging up the glass, I motion in sign language: You are beautiful.

She looks at me surprised, even anxious. And then, almost imperceptibly, her face hardens. She turns away from my window and retreats into a shadow. I look up at the sky. The once bright constellations have faded into the darkness.

Isn't it a shame that the brightest stars are always eclipsed by night?

** A/N Thank you for reading this story!! Vote/comment/do whatever and have an awesome day! :) 💙💙💙