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Stars.
There are approximately 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. There are approximately 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way. You can see approximately 5000 stars in the night sky with your naked eyes. And you are one person, just one. Sometimes, often, all of the time, it makes you feel small. It's okay, though. Stars seem small when you look at them from light-years away, but they're so, so big.
So it's okay that you're a bit small sometimes.
You know that you're still big, in a way, even if most people can't see it from far away.
And they're all so far away now. They're lightyears away, you're all alone and you feel so small.
They're so far away and you think maybe this is the smallest you'll ever feel. Maybe the feeling will last forever.
They're so far away and the stars have become strangers, like your cousin, like every other person surrounding you.
At least the stars are still here.
You can be small together. Big together.
Alone together.
—
Then, you meet the Danvers. They're strangers too, but they won't be for long. No, they’ll be family someday. For now, though, you’re still trying to wrap your head around a new world, wrap your tongue around a new language. It's hard.
Your new sister, Alex, doesn't make it easier. She makes you feel small, too.
As time goes by, you realize that, as much as you’ve gone through, she's gone through changes too. You've turned her world upside down the moment you ascended from the stars and now— well…
Now, you're bigger than her, even though you feel small. You're bigger than her in ways she thought only existed in bedtime stories. You're bigger than her, like a sun next to a planet.
It's not either of you’s fault, of course. Though maybe she doesn't realize that you're not bigger at all,really. Maybe all of the feelings she's been feeling since her world has tripled, quadrupled— whatever the word is for times infinity-ed— in size has blinded her to see just how small you actually are.
Which is fine, you think.
You think along the way you'll find each other. Like twin suns in a solar system. You can feel small together and realize you're not so small after all.
—
The moment you meet her, the axis of your world seems to trip a little, perhaps even stop for a few seconds. Or maybe it's your heart, doing things it's not supposed to do, contracting in ways it never did before. Perhaps your heart is stuttering as much as the words coming out of your mouth.
Either way, you feel as though gravity has set you free.
Oh.
But it has never really kept you down. You hope your feet didn't actually float off the floor a little when she smiled at you.
—
Alex knows something you don't.
It sucks. You're too curious not to be annoyed by her knowing stuff you don't, but you're too proud to ask what it is that she knows.
Instead, you tilt your head and frown, smiling confusedly as she stares at you. “What?”
“If you could describe Lena with just one word, what would it be?”
A nervous laugh bubbles out of you, it starts low in your stomach and ends high, sifling through your teeth.
“One word? Lena is so much more than just one word, Alex.”
She cocks her head and slowly smiles a small knowing smile. You don't know what she knows, but it's enerving.
Though you wouldn't say it out loud, the first word that came to mind is— sun.
If you could describe Lena with just one word, you'd say she is your sun.
Which sounds kind of ridiculous. Rao is your sun. Lena is one person.
—
You love stars so much that you never thought you'd fall for someone who dims their own light like she does.
But you get it, you've been dimming yours for most of your life.
Maybe she feels as small as you do, too.
—
Stars.
There are approximately 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. There are approximately 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way. You can see approximately 5000 stars in the night sky with your naked eyes. And you are two people. It's still a small number, yes, but it feels so big. It's bigger than one. It's bigger than 200 billion trillions, even.
Okay, no, it isn't, you concede.
But it feels like it.