Amalli Quinn: The Nature of Stars

Prologue

   I scanned the sky before opening my umbrella. It was a cold night, rain had poured endlessly across town for the past few days and it showed no signs of stopping. The winds whipped up a good lot of air pollution from the city and seemingly dumped it onto our suburban neighborhood to mingle with the smell of upturned earth. I frowned at the downpour and walked.

   "Dismal, isn't it?"

   I nodded. "Very. I don't like it when it rains."

   Merethe shrugged. "I like it, but not when it rains too much. Does it rain every so often here?"

   Shaking my head and keeping my eyes on the gravelly path ahead, I rounded the corner that headed home. The rain continued, making a pitter-patter sort of melody on the metal trash bins behind a nearby office building. The sky was, as usual, covered with a gloomy haze.

   Merethe Dempsey was a giant of a girl, towering over half of the boys in my class, with long, skinny limbs and fair skin, and a surprisingly high voice. She had this airy, go-with-the-flow vibe that made her so easy to get along with, and in the sluggish town we were in, she was that one spot of sunlight that never seemed to fade. Perhaps it was the city girl in her that shone through. She was young, and after spending seventeen years of comfort in the more urbanized part of our nation, she had this wanderlust that couldn't be quenched. She seemed to strive for going the distance, much farther than most would. She was not the complacent type, and as a beginner in the world of exploration she so excitedly wanted to enter, this town seemed to be a good start.

   I must admit, I had absolutely no idea on why she chose this town. There was no adrenaline rush, no excitement, no wilderness to awaken the inner adventurer within an athlete like her. I had asked her countless times before, and she always replied with the same sentence, or at least, a sentence with the same thought:

   "It's different."

   Oh, absolutely. Merethe grew up in a place jammed with buildings and boutiques and quaint coffee shops selling lattes that ranged from first class to my-grangma's-coffee-pot-could-do-so-much-better. So much variety, so much color, so much life. Yet in the midst of all that, Merethe found herself restrained. She didn't really  have a space to run or sprint or do that neck-breaking yoga she once tried to make me do. In short, she wanted a different backdrop, where she could be at peace and be adventurous at the same time. Was this town a good example? Maybe. I mean, you could sit all day in your living room and do nothing, and then you could go one step off your porch and sink ankle-deep in brown puddles because you forgot that it rained incredibly hard last night and your front lawn was now a battlefield between man and mud.

   Peace and adventure. Easy.

   "Right. I'll see you again tomorrow." Merethe said, climbing the stairs to the apartment she currently lived in. I was too busy thinking to even notice that we had already arrived at her place.

   I nodded a farewell, and she disappeared behind the red oak door, closing it with a bang that probably woke up the grumpy old man who stayed next door.

   At some times, I envied Merethe Dempsey. She didn't seem to care where her love for wandering would take her. She just made the most out of every situation and learned to love along the way. It was just easy for her.

   I went on down the path. It would be exactly six minutes before I reached the rundown bungalow that I called home. My father would be in his chair, reading a newspaper or staring absently at the basketball league playing on TV. Mom would be in the kitchen with her brown apron tied on, though it never really served a purpose as the food always got onto her shirt. She would greet me with a tired smile and usher me and my father to a silent dinner by the window overlooking the weeds in the lawn.

   I knew exactly how things would go. The mundane process of coming home after school had been etched into my memory after dad lost his job, and mom was forced to work two shifts a day to keep us going. The scholarship I applied for was helping a bit, but I struggled to keep my grades afloat and I knew that there was a high chance that it would be cancelled.

   I sighed and looked up at the sky, noticing that the rain had stopped and that the clouds had parted to reveal sections of the sky in hazy dark blue patches. Behind the thin rifts of cloud still left, I saw the flickering of a star.

   I smiled. There would be stars tonight. Even if there were so many dull things in this life, at least there were stars.

   For me, Amalli Elisabeth Quinn, that was enough.

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   Sooo, welcome to my first original story yey.

   I hope you enjoy and look forward to what I have in store for you guys and please don't forget to vote and comment.

   PLEASE comment, because I love talking to you guys. I feel like ya'll are my family now :')

   Anyways, enjoy!¡!

~ Lowii ❤