Write a Book in a Day 2017

CHAPTER 2

Starry, Starry Night

Jacket, telescope, star chart, maps, camera. I grabbed everything I needed and threw it into my beaten up backpack. It was stained and splitting at the seams from the endless hours spent waiting for stars. I swung it over my shoulder and the comforting weight settled on my shoulders as I stepped out the front door. The sun settled low onto the horizon, sending its final fingers of light onto my veranda. My bike waited dutifully for me, just as excited as I was for tonight’s escapades. I settled into a steady peddling rhythm and I could feel my shirt sleeves flapping in the wind. Left, right, straight for 2 kilometres. A familiar route. The hill in front of me grew in size as I rode closer. The dark shadows marched across the town at my back and the sun slipped down the sky, dipping below the horizon. I didn’t want to ride for too long in the dark so I quickened my peddling rhythm, making my backpack bounce faster upon my back. As the sun took its last look at the town, I reached the peak of the hill and slowed my bike to a stop. The top of the hill was grassy and dry, with the occasional rock scattered here and there. I climbed carefully across them and settled on the biggest rock – the rock that lifted me closest to the night sky mapped out above me. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my telescope: a small brass affair, patterned with my fingerprints and smudges of brown dust. The heat of the day was long forgotten by the earth. I shivered and pulled out the black jacket that I had stuffed into my bag before I left. The sky was pitch-black above me, dotted with swirling pinpricks of light that zig-zagged across the sky. The Milky Way sprawled lazily above my head, a familiar friend. It was almost time – I’d waited for nearly two years to see this star. Thousands of calculations and nights spent standing on this very rock, watching the stars blow across the sky, led me to a prediction. That tonight would be the night – all the signs pointed to something happening, something that had never happened before. I looked down at my brass telescope, my key to opening the secrets of the universe. My face blinked back at me in the reflection, clear green eyes alight with the glow of ambition. I took a breath and lifted the telescope to my eye. The world disappeared from my vision and all I could see was sky. When I lift a telescope to my eye, I can ignore every one of my awkward qualities and forget every painful conversation. For a while, I’m not a part of this world. For a while, I’m a part of the sky. The constellations stretched out before me in an endless sea of stars and dust. Cosmic purples and blues and deep, deep blacks swirled like couples locked in a dance, dresses embellished with starlight. I waited. And I waited. For the heavens to move and the sky to break. My heart sank into my dusty shoes. All my calculations were for nothing – years of sitting under the stars waiting. I was about to lower the telescope from my eye when I glimpsed it. My breath caught and I opened my eye wider to let in all the light I could. A new light was growing brighter, overpowering every star around it as it grew. All the spurring dust objects, surrounding the atmosphere, had built up and formed this new light shining brightly against the sky. It emitted soft emerald swirls from its edges, tendrils of silvery light stretching across the sky. It seemed to pulse and breathe, like a living ball of energy suspended in the inky night. This was it. It looked like no star I had ever seen – there was something alien about it, almost otherworldly. I pulled out my camera, my movements slow and deliberate, afraid to disturb the universe. I opened the aperture and extended the exposure time. I wanted to capture it perfectly. Click. I tucked the camera back into my bag and glanced back up at the sky. The alien light was fading, shrinking back into itself.

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