This is the beginning of a short story I started working on randomly this past week, I like the way it's starting but I can't be sure if it's any good so I thought I should put it up on here. It's a start, I suppose. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy and let me know what you think. Guided by Stars I don’t know how I got here. Stars above swathed in black, trees on either side surrounding this decrepit road. I ended up here before I knew it, and now I don’t know how to get back. I remember very little about the trip out here to the middle of nowhere. Or, that’s what it appears to be, as far as I can tell. Last I recall, I was getting into my car and gunning it down the road. Straight away. No looking back. Just drove and drove until the city lights disappeared behind me, until the sound of humanity dwindled in the falling light and the tank hit empty. Until I ended up here. That’s all I remember. Most other people would be freaking out right about now, after all, this is the definition of “lost.” Not a soul about beside my own, not a sound beside the silence of tree leaves in wind and the hollow howl of the night sky. There is really and truly nothing here, and I am really and truly lost. Except -- I know exactly where I am. For the first time in months, easily, I can say that I am here. Now, where here is exactly, I couldn’t tell you, but that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t feel lost. That’s a start, I suppose. I’m still not entirely sure what the last straw was for me. I’m searching my mind, looking into my memories, but nothing stands out. It was all a monotonous slog, or as most call it, just another week. Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was just the same. Regardless of how, I’m here now. So I guess that’s that. I’ve got no way back, I know that. My car was all that I took out of the city, besides myself and a water bottle I happened to have in the cup holder already. My phone died a few hours back, and the battery on the car probably doesn’t have much longer either. The two of us are just idling insignificantly here, beside trees that scrape the sky, beneath the stars that watch dispassionately in their pale light. I would feel a little lonelier if I weren’t inclined to love their distance; trained to love their impassivity. They’re out in force tonight, the stars that is, glittering away like you always hear in poems and songs. Diamonds in the sky, glittering in the imperceptible blankness that swallows all but the strongest of light. I try to be poetic sometimes, but it always comes off wrong and probably a bit pretentious. We all have our flaws, I suppose. I just wish I could love mine like people always tell you to. You ever notice that, actually? People always says that everybody is flawed, we just have to learn to live with it. I don’t get those people very much; they seem so passive to what’s happening around them. Hell, people call me apathetic as is, but at least I care about my imperfections enough to search for ways to fix them. They all seem to roll over and just take the hand they’ve been dealt. I don’t just shrug and accept my lot. There’s something in the struggle, something that just feels right. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there’s a meaning to all of this -- that would just be outlandish and I know it. But there has to be more to this existence than merely existing. Wishful thinking, sure, but it just doesn’t make sense otherwise. The overhead window is open and I have this terrific view of the sky tonight and all the glittering going on up there. I can trace out Orion’s belt, and there’s Sirius, his trusty hound, brightest star in the night sky. Despite the life we give to these burning balls of gas, they’re ultimately just as mortal as all of us. I take a bit of comfort in that, knowing that though I will fade one day, the stars aren’t that far behind. Nothing seems permanent, so why worry so much about lasting, you know? I don’t know. Just because I know that the stars all fade doesn’t make me wish I were one any less. And I mean, can you blame me? Just look at them glowing up there, untouched by everything down here. They’re flawless. Ask anyone, they’ll agree. I really do wish I could be one. A star that is. The way they burn, each one so bright it can be seen light years away. I don’t even know how far a light year is, but I know it’s pretty big. And these things can sit hundreds, even thousands of light years away from me right at this very second, but I can still see their light, clear as day. Talk about magnificent. Sometimes I think I might have been a star at one point when I’m feeling really down. I had a professor a few years back who told us that everyone is basically just star dust. That if we were to cut each and every one person down into their smallest pieces, we would find all the building blocks of the universe. It’s a little comforting, the thought that I might have at one point burned away in the sky as a guide to someone. Maybe I came from Polaris and I guided the earliest explorers safely to their homes. Or maybe I’m from a constellation and I have the stories of ancient Greece tied tightly within my soul. Maybe I can shine again one day. All I got to do is find that stardust in me and reignite it. The car door clicks open as I turn the key out of the ignition. The hum of the battery slithers and dies as I push the door out and the autumn air greets me with shivering hands. Closing the door quietly, I start to move away from the car, footsteps crackling over the leaves who weren’t strong enough to survive this late into November. The ground is littered with them.
I shove my hands deep into my pockets and shrug my coat up about my neck, feeling my scarf adjusting beneath the swaying fabric. Thankfully I had at least dressed for the weather, otherwise this might have been a much shorter night that I had anticipated. The crunch of the leaves crackle dryly beneath me as I meander forward into the dark, not seeing more than a few feet ahead of me, the stars my only light. Arriving at the guardrail, I lift one leg as high as it can go, pushing from the ground to stand firmly atop the cement barrier. Hot air streams from my mouth, forming a soft shadowy cloud before dispersing before my eyes, all in less than a second. I breath out a few more times, entranced by the air, the little magic trick that I learned to do as a child in the cold of winter for the first time. There’s still a little of that magic in the air, I see it with every exhale, but it disappears before I can grasp it. Nothing ever seems to stay. “Why,” I ask the air before I can stop myself. I hadn’t realized I needed to talk, but now I feel the words bubbling up inside me, I can’t seem to stop them from coming. “Why am I here? Where even am I? What did I ever do to deserve this? I just wanted to live, I just wanted to be happy like all the rest of them, but I couldn’t handle it, I just couldn’t be normal. So now I’m here, wherever here is. Please, just tell me why I’m here.” The words echoed solemnly against tree trunks, imperfect reflections of what I had called out reaching back to me. All I could make out was “why.” No response came. I didn’t expect one, frankly, but I had hoped, for just a minute that maybe there was someone out here with me that would call back. This isn’t a movie though, this is my life and coincidences don’t often happen when you need them to. Even if you are the main character. Sighing, I lower myself to sit on the divider, feeling the cold pavement beneath me as my feet dangle centimeters from the dark ground. “What are you doing out here?” The voice slides out smoothly and quietly from the trees like a slow creeping fog, but I jump all the same. Without thinking I say, “I could ask the same of you.” It came off far less confident than I had hoped and I blushed at the arrogance of the statement. “I don’t mean to intrude, honestly, but when you start yelling like that you can’t expect someone not to take notice,” came the voice again, in a soft tone, almost as though they were attempting to console me. “I didn’t think anyone was out here to hear me yell, I guess,” I said lamely. “But why would you yell except to be heard,” the voice asked back. “You could have whispered it or thought it if you didn’t want anyone to hear and I would never have responded. Clearly you thought -- or at least hoped -- that someone would hear.” I shivered despite the coat and scarf. It was eerie talking to this disconnected voice, especially since they had just said what I was thinking. I said this, and a laugh lilted out softly from the trees. “So you’re out here, completely lost, and the only thing that actually scares you is that you’re not totally alone? How odd.” A rustling came from the tree line, just a small slope from the divider I sat on, and out emerged a slim shape encased in the darkness of shadow. The figure moved slowly, each step seeming deliberate as though they were walking cautiously about some sleeping beast. It moved with a grace only known to women. ‘She’ started a slow gait up the black slope until she came partially into the moonlight and I caught my first true glance. Raven dark hair, neatly kept and shoulder length cropped about her small face. There was a rosiness to her cheeks that stood out starkly in the evening dark. Her eyes glowed from behind the clouds of hot air she breathed out with each step as she came closer. “Better,” She asked, a smile creeping gently across her calm face. I nodded. “Good. Now about your questions, why did you think no one could hear you? Sure, you’re in the middle of nowhere, but there’s something about this place that draws people in. You’re most certainly not alone in this.” “What do you mean others are drawn to this place,” I asked, looking up at her from my seat, feeling her eyes searching me. She seemed to be testing me for something. I felt a bit uncomfortable beneath such an intense stare, but something in her demeanor comforted me still. “I don’t even know how I got here, how am I to believe others already beat me here?” She laughed again at this, a laugh that held the songs of nightingales in it and the spring’s gentle breeze. “No one has beaten you out here, we all come at our own time and on our own accord, however; do not believe that any of us ended up here by accident. You might not have searched for this place on a map, but you have been searching for a very long time, none the less.” She was starting to sound like a fortune teller, and not the good kind either. More like one that you’d find on the boardwalk and you could pay a dollar to hear a bunch of vague nonsense that barely related to you. I said this to her and she smiled at me warmly. “It’s not a very believable thing, I know, but you must believe my words for now as I cannot show you they are true until you accept them.” “What the hell kind of deal is that,” I shot back. “Why am I supposed to trust a complete stranger I met in the middle of the night out in a forest. Just because I have nowhere to go doesn’t mean that I have to listen to you.” “But I have listened to you. Surely you see the significance in that,” she replied quietly. “Is that not what you came out here to find? Someone, or something, to listen to you? Is that not why you yelled just earlier?” I furrowed my brow, she had a point after all. Her quiet giggle told me she knew it, too. “Fine,” I said defiantly, “maybe you’re right, maybe no one seems to ever listen to me and I decided that if that was the case I might as well go to a place where no one would listen to me. Maybe I came here to yell into the void, and maybe I had hoped that it would answer me. But I never came here expecting to find someone.” She looked at me sideways, a confused look overtaking her face. “You know you weren’t looking for the void, admit it. That is the first step to accepting this. You have seen the void, as we all have. You have yelled into it already and you know that there is no response, no coming back from that blackness. You came here because you hoped that there was an alternative, not because you believed there was none.” I dropped my head down, looking at the ground beneath my feet, seeing the red and orange leaves there and knowing there was some truth to what she said. There could never be a void where there was color, that was why I had driven into the woods. “You’re right,” I said slowly, remembering briefly how I had gotten here. “This was a choice, I didn’t just randomly end up here, something in me knew this was where I wanted to be. Something held out hope that I could find something here.” “Acceptance is the first step,” she said. “The second is following me.” I looked up, searching her eyes for something hidden, something malicious, but all I saw were pools of cerulean blue. All I could find was someone to trust in. I sighed and stood from the divider, feeling my boots meet the ground with a solid thump. She was smiling again. “What’s your name,” I asked. “You can call me Serenity,” she said, grabbing my hand, and smiling reassuringly at me once more before turning and walking back off into the woods. All I could do was follow.
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Eric FoxWhen I'm not writing or reading, you can find me playing games or in an existential crisis. When I'm not doing those, I'm probably checking my email, so don't hesitate to reach out. ArchivesCategories
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