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“You know, you’ll slip if you aren’t careful!” Dan yelled out. The place was covered in ice and he was scared that Phil would slip and hit his head like last time. The other boy merely hummed and continued skipping carelessly along the snow-painted street. The thick wool poured down from the above coating the streets with yet another frosty layer and behind the grey clouds the dark blue night sky peeked out, flashing a thousand stars. Dan trudged after Phil, his converse shoes quickly starting to soak up the tempered snow. He wanted to go home but seeing Phil so happy, made the biting cold so much more bearable.
A yell from Phil made Dan snap his head up, just in time to see the white mass fly directly towards his face, and oh my god it was so cold. The snowball had hit him straight in the face, and was now slowly melting against his warm skin, making the snow run under his shirt and down his back. “Oh its on” Dan yelled back, bending forward and quickly scraping the snow together, compressing it in his hands to a tiny ball, that he then lunged forwards, aiming towards Phil who stood a couple of meters away. A soft thud, followed by a complaining sound from Phil, told Dan that the snowball had found its target.
Dan bended down once again to pick up some more snow, leaving his neck exposed. Phil seized this opportunity and flicked a snowball across the yard, missing him by a couple of centimeter. The war raged on between the two of them until they where both a damp mess, their hair tousled and cheeks firing red. Dan sighed and raised his hands to his head.
“Okay, okay, war over?”
Phil smiled “Yea lets get home” he quickly said, Dan turned his back only to hear the sound of Phil shouting: “After this one”. This time Phil didn’t miss, and the ball hit him directly in his neck, making his head fall forward from the blow. Dan felt the wet, dribbling snow, slowly melting down his spine. He shivered.
“Fuck you Phil”
He quickly bended down again to pick up some more snow, but while doing this, Phil had lunged himself forward, pressing Dan’s face towards the chilly, snow-covered ground. A surprised Dan found himself falling next to Phil in the cold, landing with a slight thump. “Bloody hell Phil, I’m freezing my tits off” he complained, “I wanna go home”. Phil only shushed him and pointed towards the vast, dark sky. Dan sighed and looked up.
First he only saw the snowy flakes that tenderly caressed his face as they spiraled towards him, but when the cloud slowly drifted further away, he could see a hole in the thick clouds. He could see the sky. The star-spotted ceiling overwhelmed him with its never ending continuity, its dark blue veil slightly darkening the edges of the bright stars, only contributed to the them shining so much brighter, as if they had carved through it, just to shine for him.
The sky became one with the earth, and he couldn’t see where one stopped and the other started. All was dark beauty. It was as if the darkness slowly consumed him, making him feel as if he was a part of it. He heard his breath in the chilly wind that was playing with his damp hair and felt his movements in the slightly swaying branches, and he felt as if the entire city was his heartbeat, pulsating in an endless beat and he felt alive.
Phil hesitantly broke the silence that had fallen between them, asking Dan what his favorite part about the stars where. “I, I don’t know” he said, “Maybe that they are so much bigger than anything? It makes you feel incredibly tiny and grateful” Phil nodded, he did understand but that wasn’t his favorite part about them.
“I like the way they are so eternal. The whole world can break down in flames, a world war could break out but the stars would remain. These stars above us have witnessed the first cells forming into life, they have seen the fall of the dinosaurs and the slow evolution of mankind. Think of all the incredible stories they could tell, think about how every single person on earth who have ever existed have looked up on the same stars that you are staring at now. Darwin, Einstein, Shakespeare and even Jesus. They all looked at these stars, they lived beneath them just as we do, and that comforts me in a way, that no matter how well I succeed, no matter how miserably I fail these stars above me will always be bigger than anything I could ever achieve.”
“I think I have another favorite part,” Dan whispered as his hand found the icy fingers of his boyfriend, slightly squeezing it, “that in such a massive universe I was lucky enough to find you under these stars”.