Polaris

Polaris laughed. Caught up in a filmy web, racing through the inky black, the sound burst from her for the first time in centuries. The chime of star laughter is a sound not often heard by human ears; stars are old creatures, their laughter taken ill by decades of monotonous mortal disease. But now Polaris was shaking, rolling over and over in the abyss of space, chuckling and screaming, a shooting flame through the sky.

The thing that held her was a Space Net 1130™, the favorite choice of space pirate poachers, spider threads of silver splayed wide across the night to capture unsuspecting star-things in its wake, a splash of milky dust trailing behind the space pirate’s ship as it went.

Most of the stars had screamed fearfully as the Net approached, shrill pitches cut short by the sudden notion that they might hide from the approaching fearful beast. It is not in a star’s nature to hide. After all, the thing that they do for so many years on end is to shine forth through obscurity. Polaris knew nothing more than being seen, and so she did not hide quite well enough, did not wink out quickly enough. She thought she saw Betelgeuse cut a lazy side step through the chaotic night which was awhirl with the movements of a hundred stars like fireflies down on earth in the summer. She thought she saw Sirius open up his sunny arms and greet the challenge with a reckless grin.

Time stretching on had rendered her old and tired. Every mortal year that passed drew colder her shell, her colors setting like the sun into chilly red and orange. Inside, her heart burned white hot, a painful reminder of youth since passed, of hope endlessly unrequited. So perhaps she had allowed the space pirate to catch her, or maybe her way had been so set as to allow her no change in luminosity. On either hand there lay a captured star.

“I’m flying,” Polaris murmured, her voice breathy like a child’s. Though her back was pressed hard against the unbreakable pearlescent web, and the strands cut into her tough skin leaving angry welts of blue, she saw only the endless heavens before her.

This is what falling feels like, she thought. Polaris had always wondered. With each of her fellows that fell, her curiosity grew. But she was steady and she was true and she had never wavered from her post in the night sky. She had yearned though. As ancient as she had grown, she yearned to know what freedom felt like. Being stalwart and strong is all well and good, but Polaris had never had the opportunity to fly free, to chase the heavens to their end. In her core, she was the child who reaches her hand threw bars. Though it horrified her to think it, Polaris wanted nothing more than to know the brilliant agony of burning out in an arch of wishing flame.

Glancing quickly at her silver cage, Polaris sighed. She was not truly free. Stretching as wide as she could go, she felt suddenly so small.

“Watch it,” she snapped, a wonderfully childish heat of anger filling her as Sirius slammed one long leg into her side. He’d been flailing wildly with the motion of flight, a sort of chaotic dance through the darkness.

“Sorry.” While his expression read sheepishness, his eyes held only mischief. There had been a time when Polaris had fancied herself in love with Sirius and his constant, barking laugh, but that time had passed with Polaris’ belief in childhood things, stored away in her private center to melt with the rest of her dreams. It is a little known fact that stars dream; they have little else to do up there in the silent sky.

Now she felt all of those dreams, so carefully bottled, rushing through her veins in a sudden current. Sirius watched her colors grow flushed, his barking laughter joining her chiming chuckles. All of the young stars drew away from the two of them, growing bluer and bluer in the sea of night.

“Are you scared, Pol?” Sirius was, for once, without laughter. Humor was never far from his black eyes, as deep as the night itself.

“No,” she answered, and it was true. Polaris was excited, enchanted with the sudden unexpected adventure. If Sirius was surprised, he didn’t show it. With a shrug, he found some younger stars to wheedle. Polaris watched him and knew that he was not any more frightened than she. They had had many years to get to know one another, and she doubted that his comment was anything more than a hopeful attempt to find an excuse to fling his warmth around her chilled shoulders.

But Polaris was not so cold anymore. For a few moments, she amused herself by imagining the human chaos at her disappearance. How much trouble these particular pirates will be in, she mused, a ghostly smile carving her face.

“It’s been a long time since I saw you smile, Pol.”

“It’s been a long time since you payed attention, Sirius.” He frowned, and the delicious warmth grew within Polaris. She felt like a youth again, playing mean, masking games with the boy stars.

“I was always paying attention, Polaris.” Sirius’ eyes were burning into hers. Polaris wondered, not for the first time, how he had maintained such a happy spirit for so long. Now, however, she found herself infected with the same spirit, the champagne-like bubbly place within her burning through her veins in a sudden current.

Throwing back her head, Polaris laughed. Sirius watched her with gleaming eyes. There had been a time when he had called her the most beautiful star in the sky. That was before she had learned not to believe it.

Polaris was drowning in rebirth, fire sweeping her all over and over again. The Net progressed through the sky, unaware of the joyous star it held within. None of the younger stars had ever seen anyone so bright, so beautiful. They wondered where she had come from, for the Polaris who had entered the Net was not the same as the one they now knew.

Sirius laughed with her. It had once been his dearest wish to shine white hot with tendrils of laughter alongside Polaris. The Net bumped through a meteor field, slamming the two manic beings together. Polaris’ breath left her in a woosh. She slammed against Sirius’ cold, hard heat. Their flames mixed, twinkling brightly in the mess of silver light, a golden heart in the chaos.

For a moment, they were still and silent. Polaris felt younger than she had felt when she was born, a collection of universal matter. She felt younger than she had when Sirius had first ignited her night, younger than when she had danced with Andromeda in the inky spring, or flirted with Scorpio from afar.

Her stellar core was glowing. In a thousand years, she had not felt this warm and alive. Perhaps somewhere along the ride, Polaris realized what would happen next. Perhaps it was when Sirius took her hand with the same whoop of laughter that had proceeded all his childhood adventures. Lying side by side on the shining Net, they stared at the free floating things in the heavens, dark matter and suspended celestial beings. Their smiles were near identical, though there had been a time when Polaris had been unable to fathom smiling as brightly as Sirius. In the last second, Polaris tried to wriggle free, but Sirius drew their joined fists tight over his sparking heart.

And then, in a blink, a wink of stardust, after thousands of years of waiting, Polaris went supernova, dragging Sirius with her by the hand into wonderfully agonizing freedom.

It hurts

People destroy themselves.

And it hurts.

People destroy their happiness.

And it hurts.

People destroy each other.

And it hurts.

And I watch them burn.

And it hurts.

And I burn with them.

And it hurts.

The Small People

Started out being inspired by the idea that stars are basically just ghosts.

Unedited, random piece. I like writing in fairy-tale-esque verse.

The sun it cried a bright flame

and with its breath it said,

“This earth, it turns so slowly.

They don’t know that they are dead.”

And he could spin them faster

“I won’t,” his promise tragic.

And on and on he watched them,

and always they were static.

On Earth, they had no knowledge

of pain as bright as this:

the sun the one thing living,

his fire curled in fists.

***

The stars were ghosts of living,

they birthed by death’s bright eye.

They watched the people spinning

and played their part to die.

They knew the mortals’ true flaw

unable to see truth,

the date they should be fighting

mortal claw and human tooth.

From Earth, they knew not sadness

of watching dead men’s lives,

though every night they saw it:

their fate inside the sky.

***

And Earth it cradled softly

its children bright and dying,

a beauty great and horrid

like sun and stars combining.

The world, it spun so slowly.

Time is a mortal thing

that keeps the people blinded

in constant wandering.

And if they spun it faster

they’d fly off in the sky

and shake this curse of living,

the final day to die.

***

The sky, it held them gently.

The universe expanded.

The people lived so small-y

like human life demanded.

The world, it let them go on.

The sun, it cried their fate.

Star-ghosts illuminated

their expiration date.

The mortals nodded brightly;

they felt the sun’s bright ray,

the tears that flew in star dust,

and still, on Earth, they stayed.

The Beating Heart

Just read this to the rhythm of your heart beating.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

breathe in

it’s peace

that fills

your lungs

breathe out

it’s war

that pumps

your blood

stand up

it’s guts

that hold

your frame

break down

it’s fear

that moves

your limbs

fists clenched

it’s hope

that’s trained

your thoughts

give in

your hope

is not

enough

shut up

it’s dumb

to part

your lips

bare teeth

they’re lies

that make

you live

open eyes

it’s life

that wakes

your time

close eyes

it’s death

that lives

your life

Super rough because I have to go study for Biology now, but I wanted to get something written down before I forgot.

Mother's Foundling

Mother studied the still white figure. A child, no a teenage girl, lay bathed in the hues of night. Mother had not realized that the child was not a child. She wondered what made the child so innocent.
Honey hair spilled around her as she lay peaceful in the cold grass. Shadow things made lines across her pale, soft face. Relaxed as if asleep. But, no, the innocence lay in the whites.
Those orbs were like moons in the vague darkness, white parts glistening hazily. Staring. Her eyes reflected the sky, the mirror earth, the longing flight of ghostly stars. Staring.
One ivory palm faced up, as if in religious meditation. As if by benediction or rapture.Vulnerable to the chastising sky.
Mother thought with approval that perhaps she had given herself over to the clawing tears, sat cross-legged, back arched down with sobs that fell into open palms. Sacrificial pools offered to the stars.
The other hand faced down, claws digging into the earth to feel the pulse that beat there. Talons scratching deep in effort to hold still the spinning of physical time. A visible proof of life’s fated will.
Mother read in that hand, that coalition of muscle and thought, the sound of gasping for breath. Mother loved that hand.
Mother observed the way the child lay, exquisitely perched on the skewer of mortal earth. Body held taught yet quiet on invisible tight rope. Knees bent as if fallen backward from begging or prayer. Though Mother hardly knew the difference.
The tree shadows scraped wickedly at her edges, making them soft and transient. It was in mimicry of her current nature.
Mother knelt to touch the honey hair that spilt all around, combed with evening dew. Her eyes traveled the human length to the child’s feet. One pointed precisely as a ballerina’s. It’s tenseness in contrast to the body’s will.
The other clumsily upturned, almost grotesque.
This child had lived too gently in the in between until the reckoning moment.
And the poor child’s white dress was smeared with dirt and water, touched by earth’s sullying hands. She lay spoiled beneath the pure, pure sky.
Mother stepped away, dusting her hands of the sky’s child. Or what had once been.
And so Mother turned.
Mother did not need another body. She already held too many in her womb.
And so Mother walked.
Leaving the corpse behind.


http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2949839/1/Mothers_Foundling

The Human Business

We raise foundation. Naturally unnatural ties. Mother. Father.
We grow, roots. Heart beast and blood, vines. Love.
We bloom and we blossom.
We break. We rebuild.
We trust. Again. Sheltering leaves. Fear.
We move along.
Our roots fill the cracks in the concrete.
We are destroyed. Fire.
We stand up again. Singed.
And we go about the human business of making worlds. Again.
Like birds and nests we live. Fragile.
This is the human way.