Saturday // Peterick Oneshots

14. Bottled Up Starlight

There was a prompt that inspired this, but I don't remember what it was or where I found it. It had the word "star" in it and my brain came up with this. I think it's cute. Astronaut au (kind of). Made up facts about made up technology on a made up voyage. SRAR era.

There wasn't much that was comforting about the pitch black expanse of the universe. Sure, the specks of starlight here and there were pretty, and seeing planets from space was pretty cool, but the darkness only reminded Pete of how alone he was.

Two more years, he kept telling himself. Two more years and you'll be back on Earth with Patrick.

But until then, he had a task to do.

He wasn't sure what cleaning up dying stars was meant to accomplish, but by god he was going to do it. It wasn't hard. All he had to do was operate some machinery to collect samples, bottle them, label them, and store them for the journey. The machinery was programmed to collect just the right amount of stardust, so all Pete had to do on that front was push a few buttons. The only possible malfunction would be if the machine collected the wrong amount.

Which, today, it had.

And Pete was about to send it back out into space- really, he was- when he noticed a spare jar. The idea hit him out of nowhere, and he bottled up the spare sample. It barely filled a third of the glass but it shone beautifully.

He glanced at the bottles of stardust with their small blue labels and grabbed a sharpie.

To Trick,
So you can see just how much you shine in my eyes.