Stars

She wanted to know what the stars meant. She’d ask the grown-ups sometimes but they didn’t really understand the question. They would say things like, “Oh, they are just a bit of hot air.”

That wasn’t right and the more people gave her the wrong answer, the more lonely she felt.

Time passed. Her hair grew longer, she grew taller and in the back of her mind she kept an eye out for someone to answer her question.

Until, one day, a boy arrived.

He was small and smart and spent more than a little time wearing a handmade paper crown. He liked to collect dusty old books. He’d hold one up and blow the dust into a sunbeam. It would catch the light and sparkle off the lenses of his spectacles and he’d grin madly, like it was the best thing in the world.

She liked him immediately and one quiet afternoon, sitting on the floor of his room, the question jumped in her mind like a shout. It bubbled up out of her and in her nervousness she told him what the grown-ups always said.

“But that’s what they are,” he said. “Not what they mean.”

She nodded, glad that he saw the problem with the answer.

“It’s not true, anyway. They are so much more than that.” He added.

“Well, then. It’s not a lie, exactly.”

“No. Just wrong.” He hesitated. “I think they mean forever. I think they mean lasting longer than we are alive. Shining out like that. Like they want to be seen.”

A slow smile spread on her face. She must look like he did after he made the dust spark in the air. He’d answered what she’d always thought. For a moment, she didn’t feel so alone.