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People think the stars are always the same. Constellations are reliable, enough to navigate by like poles of the earth. But the sky is always changing. It’s an astronomer’s job to know so, to watch for when something new appears, or disappears.
The scent of flowers was thick in the evening air. It had been an unusually warm summer in St. Petersburg. Chamomile and daisies bloomed in every corner, small yellow blossoms pushed through cracks in the cobbled walkways of the university. The astronomer’s veins buzzed with excitement. Tomorrow, finally, he was going home. Back to the warm drifting fog of the coasts of Japan. Back to his family, back to sake and hot springs and rice.
But first, one last look through his faithful old telescope. One last view at the angle of the stars this far north.
A cough behind his shoulder made the astronomer jump. “Ah!” he let out a yelp, and when he turned to see a man in a light blue shirt standing at the edge of the stairs, he took a step back. The man was tall, lean, and unimaginably handsome. The astronomer’s face flushed pink as a rose.
“Sorry to startle you!” at least the man seemed as embarrassed as him. “I didn’t think anyone would be up here at this time of night.”
The astronomer took a long moment to respond, blinking away his surprise. When he spoke, it was in thickly accented Russian. “Me either,” he finally said behind the blush.
“Do you always come here?” the man said. His eyes crinkled at the edges with a grin he wasn’t showing.
The astronomer cocked his head, glances back up at the sky as if looking for answers. He couldn’t help his own smile when it cracked open his lips. “Always,” he replied. “I have a nicer telescope down at Pulkovo, but it’s nice to use my own every once in awhile.”
“It’s amazing,” the man removed off his hat and came to stand next to the astronomer, “that we haven’t met here before. I come to this terrace at least twice a week.”
A flutter rose up in the astronomer’s chest, below his breastbone. “A shame. We must have missed each other.”
“Ah, such as it goes. Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing. Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”
“What’s that from?” the astronomer asked, eyebrow raised. His black hair fluttered in front of his eyes as another fragrant breeze passed over the balcony.
“Longfellow. The Theologian’s Tale. I teach a class on the Fireside Poets every spring,” the man leaned an elbow down to the cool stone of the balustrade, balanced his chin in his hand as he looked back at the astronomer. His eyes were the color of the ocean in summer.
“What’s your name?” the astronomer asks, forgetting to give his own.
They talked long into the night. Thoughts of excusing himself rattled through the astronomer's brain but dissipated into mist whenever the man spoke again. Conversation with him was unusually easy. Whenever the astronomer was unable to come up with the words for what he wants, the man met him halfway, and words kept flowing between them as smoothly as the moon moved overhead.
“May I look?” the man said eventually, gesturing at the telescope.
“Of course!” the astronomer moved to the side. “This is one of my favourite sections to view. Especially this time of year.”
So the man looked. His silver hair gleamed in the moonlight like a star sent down to guide the astronomer home. Like a beam to navigate by like the poles of the earth.
~ * ~
The trip home lasted nearly two weeks, all together. But when the green shore of Honshu came into view from his boat, the bone-deep exhaustion of travel was replaced by warm curls of joy licking up his veins and pushing a luminous smile onto his cheeks.
“Have you decided what to name the comet you discovered?” the board asked when the astronomer arrived in Tokyo to present the findings from his stay in Pulkovo.
The astronomer smiled. Two weeks was a long time to think of a suitable name for his newest discovery. “Hai,” he said, happy at the simple pleasure of speaking his mother tongue again. “Longfellow’s Comet.”