Starlight

• Azariah Wigley-Gill, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2022

They say the most beautiful light in the world comes from the stars.

I think it’s a lie. My night sky is grey-blue and lifeless, sitting atop the sprawling city like a dusty old blanket. Streetlights and windows spew light in every artificial colour imaginable; coating the streets in a permanent brightness that stains my eyelids even when I blink. Sometimes, I wish it were dark. Dark enough to see if they speak the truth. Dark enough to see if the stars even still exist at all.

My battered trainers slip on the crumbling pathway, sending discarded cans and bottles skittering down the hillside. Sweat trickles down my back as the suffocating heat presses down on every inch of exposed skin. Skirting the rusty railing, I slip up the last steps and gaze over the city.

They say the world used to be green. Perhaps that’s a lie too – my city is painted in every shade of grey; a graveyard of towering stone buildings sprawling across hilltops and gullies, crushing everything that dared grow beneath. The sea of city lights glares up at me, lifeless as the streets they illuminate.

They say the world will die when the sun does. I think it died with the stars.
I watch the bleak sky now, searching for any glimpse of life. Starving for proof that, once upon a time, there was more than this. And I imagine.

A forest bursts up over the city, vibrant green beneath layers of crystal dew. Delicate ferns unfold around my feet, spreading across the ground in a carpet of soft emerald green. Flowers in every shade of pink and blue drip from tangled branches, puffing motes of pollen that twirl in the crisp evening air. I breathe deeply, relishing the intoxicating scent. The very earth seems to hum with life.

Far above me, massive trees stretch their gnarled limbs toward a sky filled with a million stars. Breath stolen, I watch the blazing dots spin overhead, dancing a wild path through the inky black night. The sky is on fire, burning, shining, lighting up the world beneath.
Glorious starlight pours through the canopy, pure white and as delicate as a moth’s wings against my skin. They were right.

Ripples spread across the vision, scarring its beauty like tossed pebbles warping a lake’s glassy reflection. My breath catches, fingers grasping desperately for a wonderland that crumbles into little more than dust and shadows.
This world doesn’t exist. It’s a place of untamed beauty, visited in the deepest of dreams and long-lost memories; and sometimes, the wild imagination of a child who has never known anything but grey streets and a silent, hollow sky.

The light and smog and heat of reality crush me, suffocating after the blissful reprieve. I buckle, knees scraping the dusty ground. Eyes prickling with tears, I search the heavens desperately. Frantically.
Nothing.
The most beautiful light in the world once came from the stars. Now, the silent sky echoes with their loss. And beneath it, we mourn.