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When you're eight years old you make wishes on the first star out at night and those that fall from heaven. You want to know what they feel like, what it is to be one. You trace the constellations spread out above the desert, learning their stories, and one day you hope to be among them. Tracing them with your own ship, hopping galaxy to galaxy, leaving behind a trail of comet dust to draw them in the night sky.
When you are eight years old you want to protect everyone, you want to be the hero. You will protect Earth and the universe because you are all that is right and good in the universe. You are Hercules cleverly defeating the Hydra. Perseus defending Andromeda from the sea monster.
When you are eight years old every dream and wish is possible, no matter how the falling stars die out in the atmosphere like a bad omen on a clear night. You point out the farthest stars you can possibly see and say “I'm going there.” You imagine all the possibilities you can, but nothing you wish or dream can prepare you for when you are no longer eight years old.
When you are eight years old you cannot imagine how you feel when you finally, finally, find your way to the stars. When you find your destiny to defend the universe from a ten thousand year old threat.
When you are eight years old you think you're Hercules, and Perseus. You think you will defeat the Hydra and slay the sea monster. But when an eight year old turns seventeen they realize that wishes can come true but never as you imagined when you were eight.
When you are seventeen you have an epiphany, and you realize as you are falling through the atmosphere of some far off planet, like the stars you made wishes on so long ago, that you are not Hercules. You are not Perseus. You are fighting the Hydra but you are seventeen and afraid. You are a child of cold desert nights lost among too distant stars and a child you still are.
At seventeen you are not Hercules. You are only a child standing against a nightmare made real and you can only make a wish as you fall like a star.