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Out there in the great sea of blackness, a cold blanket over a warm world, lie little spots of brightness. When the lightlessness of heaven and earth match, they are illuminated instead by moon and star. Mists moving over millions of years, reflections of the sun, all illuminate the night in a pale darkless shade that, though cold in feeling, still leaves the heart warm.
You have looked up at the stars a great many times now. Even at your lowest point, there was a brief sense of calm when you did so. Even when the sight of them instilled wistfulness, pain, longing, there was a moment where the heart stilled and you could simply be . A moment where the universe didn’t lead, and you didn’t follow. The universe was , and you were .
Your family didn’t quite understand. It was frustrating, the way they were so dismissive of your knowledge—not just your beliefs, but the facts that underpinned it. Knowledge lost alongside your home, perhaps. Even then, you only remembered it on instinct, if at all. Was it disingenuous to say you ‘believed’ in something you couldn’t even remember?
There were some loops where you were asked what the stars meant. Not what they were, what they meant. That was a question you hadn’t expected. You answered truthfully every time. You also answered differently every time.
“Stars are memories,” you said often, starting a sentence in a way you wouldn’t know how to end, “so some people say at least. There’s more stars than we can see with our eyes, and more thoughts than we can keep in our brains. They say that the memories we’ve lost get stuck in the air, and light up. That way, even if we don’t know what they are, we still know they are .”
Who was it that asked you again… maybe it was Mirabelle? Trying to understand why you cared about these dots she wasn’t allowed to care about anymore, if only because someone willed her to forget. Regardless, Mirabelle found it a curious answer, even if she liked it. She talked about how she was taught to meditate when she was younger, imagining her bad thoughts like bubbles she would blow into the sky. A very… Mirabelle detail, now that you go over it again. You smiled and nodded—letting go could be as beautiful as it was frustrating.
You wonder, though, if your own memories are up there. If the memory of your country is up there. If it could return to you, a star fallen down and carried in your pocket.
Perhaps that was Loop. Maybe your memory couldn’t come back in one piece, but in one shape. One that talked down to you, but seemed to like you. Whose mix of emotions felt vindictive at times and empathetic later. Maybe these people were right. Loop didn’t seem to know about your home, but they obscured a lot of knowledge.
“We use the stars to navigate, too,” you would add, “much like our memories guide us. You can trace the shapes of stars together to figure out where you are, or where to go. Each star would be a collection of memories, a single Thought. The ideas of the past guiding the people of the future. That’s pretty interesting, if you ask me.”
You’re not sure why you remember this, when you so often seem to forget. It sticks in your mind unflinchingly, a root finally growing a stalk out once more, a new tree birthed at the start of spring. It leaves one to wonder if it will grow, if more things might return. Besides the stars, you tried to imagine the name of your parents, your friends, your home… it was hard to care sometimes, you noticed—easier to dismiss, or to forget, instead of being tormented by the emptiness left there. Still, you wanted to nurture the stalk inside your mind, see what fruits it might grow.
What it grew into, though, wasn’t clear. The important information never came. Not your parents, not the beach you walked in your youth, not even the first time you tried on your cloak and found it the most perfect thing in the world. All you have for that is imagination. Instead, your memories conceded only a sight of the eyes looking up from on high.
Where else then, did your mind wander? A metaphor of similar calibre, you think. It was another loop, when you and Isa were stargazing together. You couldn’t explain which constellation was which, but you told him what a constellation was.
“Think of it like fruits from the same tree. Each fruit is the same ‘thing’, but it’s not the same thing. Older, younger, different shades, different sizes, but we connect them because it makes sense to us. We don’t have the tree to show the forest by, but we can draw a line between this one and that one, and say: ‘these are apples from the same batch, and it’s a good harvest’. And, when we eat these apples, we tell a story about them, about how the tree grew and what it means to us. It’s like the Favour Tree, but different.”
Isabeau… listened. Of course he did! Part of you wondered if he’d be too busy staring at you, but he seemed to genuinely register every word from your mouth, even when you would forget it.
You’d said these things a few times before it stuck, after all. Isa helped you remember the first time you forgot. He explained your metaphor piece by piece, so you could share in the rediscovery of your home.
“Well, sometimes when you talk really passionately, it’s about something your brain doesn’t hold on to for long, you know? So I figured I’d pay extra attention for you, so you won’t forget about it!”
You were sure your heart skipped a beat at that moment. That level of attention felt so… genuine. Even as Isa blushed and tried to be modest about it, you couldn’t help but linger with that thought. You’d been skittish about getting close to him since that one time, but that fear faded then, even if only for a moment.
You leaned against him and said you were happy about that. To have someone else to remember these things. It was scary, to think all these things people believe in could be forgotten. He smiled back at you-you didn’t even realise you were smiling- and assured you that that’s what friends are for. That’s what people are for. The world had its own memory to work by, nothing was ever really forgotten.
Odile would say something similar. Or, you said something similar to her. If stars were memories, then nothing ever stopped existing. Every word spoken moves endlessly, every step taken changes the ground you walk on.
Your memory hasn’t been good for as long as you could, well, remember. As much as you’d like to say you committed Isabeau’s words to it, you wonder if they are actually the ones he spoke back then. Perhaps it repeated in your head so many times that, at a point, it ceased to be the real thing? This question was one of very few questions you’ve answered in different ways throughout the loops, a novel little thing you happened upon, but that made it that much harder to piece through the shards and glue together the truth.
What was it that Odile said? There was some Ka-Buan tradition about that… filling the cracks with gold, or something.
You would have to ask her, when appropriate.
When Odile asked you what the stars meant to you, you thought a little. You looked up at them, then down at the gemstones hanging from her glasses.
“Stars and gemstones have a lot in common. When we look up at the stars, we don’t just see little lights. We see all the stuff they’re made of, tightly packed together to create a thing of beauty. Stars are… graves, almost. The remains of something great, sure, but no less beautiful for it. The universe makes these gems for us, and we can look up at them in wonder.”
It was… more conceptual than you’d thought you’d go for with Odile. She was respectful about these topics, but you were never sure if it was the place to ‘meet’ her at. You very rarely saw her pray to the Expressions, if you ever had, and her study of craft had always felt like a venture into the concrete as opposed to the spiritual. At the same time, looking at those gemstones dangling from her frames, knowing what she’d said about rituals for the dead, you couldn’t help but wonder if she was carrying two stars with her.
“That’s an interesting thought—the sky as a graveyard,” she murmured, noting something down, “do you think of that as morbid, or simply fact?’
“It’s just like what happens in nature here, isn’t it? Just much bigger,” you replied, “like plants, mushrooms, scavengers… but with the pieces of the universe, like clockwork. I don’t think I could tell you anywhere near how it really works, but the idea alone, of something that big and complex? That’s pretty beautiful.”
Odile nodded. She had her thinking face on, the one that Mira and Isa had called ‘cute’ once, the little crinkle in the corner of her eyes and the small smile playing at her lips, small but bright tells of someone who, even through the dismissiveness of the forgotten, had curiosity and care.
You want to learn these things alongside her, one day.
Bonnie asked you what the stars meant only once. They didn’t usually care, either because they knew a little about it or because they didn’t want to care—but secretly did. You were in the astronomy room, stargazing as had slowly become usual, and they asked why you even cared about the little lights.
“They’re our friends,” you said with a smile, “Always there to lead the way, to show pretty sights. My parents always told stories of stars coming down here to help out. Sometimes I wonder which one might have helped us, if they were real.”
Bonnie paused at that, looking up at the stars. Some sort of recognition flashed in their eyes.
“I think Nille told me a story like that when I was a kid,” the preteen said, though you didn’t tease them for their youth this time, “about a little light that looked for a stone it dropped. It was weird! Nothing like the normal stories. But…”
“The story of the Flint and its Spark,” you would reply immediately, “I’ve heard a few versions of it. I always thought its moral was kinda stupid, though. Not like you need to let go of your past all the time, you know?”
“Yeah, that part was dumb!” Bonnie agreed, “The flint made Spark and they don’t even get to stay together! It’s crab!”
You couldn’t help but laugh a little, agreeing: “exactly. I like the stories with nicer endings. Did Nille ever tell you the story about the prince of the northern stars?”
“Nah, doesn’t sound familiar. What’s that about?”
You had expected an interruption. Maybe the others were surprised to see you talk so much, or they’d also realised this was a dead end. Regardless, you managed to string together a good amount of the story before you forgot. The details elude you now, something about travelling on a ship towards a missing star, but it was the first time in a while that Bonnie wasn’t distant, or worried, or every other complicated emotion going on in their brain. It was a moment you wished could stretch out into forever.
It didn’t, of course. But you’re not too upset about it now. You try not to be, at least! It’s one of those little things you learned to let go, like Loop told you. It’s impossible to hold on to everything forever—maybe that story’s moral had something to it, after all.
You pondered the idea as you all travelled together. Every night you would look up at the stars, smile, and hope -not wish- that things would be okay. There were questions on your mind still, questions you were asked and asking.
There were other definitions to the stars, ones Loop told you about. Loop had described them as stigmata: signs of disease or harm. When you helpfully pointed out that Loop was a star, they told you to “read into that a little, Stardust!”
You think you understand, now. It makes you sympathise a little more, that one’s wish was seen as their flaw, even if you understood that mindset. Loop’s body was covered in little stars, their chest was one as well. It made you think.
Scar tissue burns on your arm. Phantom pain.
If you had been like Loop, would your own body cover itself in more stars than you could count? Would your head burn too brightly, so it could destroy the candlewick? Or are the sides of that coin both heads?
From Star to Stardust—the remains of a mistake.
Not even more than that?
Stardust was but the lightless liquid that seeped out of your wounds, glistening in the light of frozen torches. It rarely spilled of your own accord, and even then it was not about the dust, but the star that made it. You wondered if thinking of it in this way would hurt you, like Loop said thinking about— — —
There is a constellation on your arm. You call it ‘the traveller’, though it stays very still. If you draw the lines just right, you get a hat, a cloak, a head. It’s you!
You’ve looked at it a few times- you’ve looked at it every morning. Wondering if those stars will fade. You didn’t even know what kind of stars they were: stigmata, friends, memories, remains, fruits…
Memories, you might settle on. Memories of a time you wouldn’t go back to. Not a warning per se, but something to understand.
Eventually, you’d have to turn to Mirabelle, or Isabeau, or Odile. There might be a day where you’d have to turn to Bonnie. You’d have to explain these scars to them, these stars that you’d call stigmata. To say, “I’ve inscribed upon my skin a pain I held on a pedestal. This feeling is still there. I’ve hurt myself, but I want to stop.”
Maybe in more objective terms. Your family would be worried sick, but they would help. They would find the right person to help you, even. Guiding you along the star charts, from point to point. They were used to navigate, after all—each member of your little constellation, each step to recovery, every scrap of joy or ounce of regret. It was a matter of finding the right star.
The universe was everywhere. Stars were every thing . Reading the meaning from that was as easy or complicated as you could make it. With that meaning in your hands… perhaps it was time to make something beautiful, find your own look at the stars.