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Humans don't look up.
At my height, it is a requirement. my sister, who I continue to refer to as despite her protests, stands thirty-nine centimeters taller than me. To make eye contact with her, something else she protests, I have to look at an eleven degree angle if I am two meters away. If I am asked to get something from a shelf, I have to look up to see things that are eye level for most people.
Humans don't look up, but dolls do.
I've never seen Antares, I never even had the chance. Deneb has been gone for so long that it feels almost mythological. But Regulus I remember. I remember pointing and saying "it's gone," only to be swiftly punished by my sister for speaking out of turn. I wonder if she remembered that moment the next time.
It was Aldebaran. Just like Regulus, there was a sudden shimmer before turning a piercing blue that lasted for but an instant. It was green for seconds after that, then yellow, then orange, then red, fading into nothing. "It's gone," I said again, speaking out of turn for the first time in near fourteen years.
I wasn't punished this time, so perhaps she did remember. This time she asked me what was gone.
"Aldebaran."
Humans don't tend to look up. Dolls always do.
This time we both did.
I familiarized myself with astronomy shortly after the disappearance of Regulus. This was behind my sister's back, always being careful to put books back into place, to carefully roll charts back up, to do as much calculation internally as I could, which is admittedly very little. I smuggled away paper and writing implements while forgoing precision tools, relying instead on the precision of the craftsmanship of my own body. There were only two points of data to work with, but I had a perfect understanding of time.
It was a clear night only a bit more than twenty-two years later. I knew my math was correct, though I did not know if my hypothesis was. I pointed upward, directly at Capella. My sister paid no attention, even as I spoke out of turn in an attempt to draw her eye.
It was to no avail. I watched as Capella flashed a brilliant blue, then faded to green, then yellow, then orange, slowly fading to blackness as the other two did.
"Capella is gone, sister."
She looked at me with the same hatred she always did when I referred to her like that, but I could see the way her anger gave way to a sort of scientific curiosity that she had whenever she was working. She asked me what happened, I explained to her the way the stars became glorious, only to fade to nothing over the course of mere seconds. I told her that I knew it was going to happen. She asked me how I knew. I told her that I was confirming a hypothesis.
She did not speak to me again for slightly more than six years.
"Which one this time, then?" she finally asked, on a cold, clear night. I pointed up towards Arcturus and told her it would be that one, in approximately two and a half hours. We waited in silence as I continued to point.
I counted down when we reached the ten second mark.
I wonder if that's why she looked at what happened to the star with sadness rather than fear. I wondered why I feared her more than the approaching darkness, even after all her punishments.
There was much discussion in scientific and arcane communities to try and discern what was happening, but I was not privy to listen in, only reading what I could in published works without my sister noticing. Pollux, Fomalhaut and Vega in the same year, Altair, then Procyon. All of them suffered the same fate. My sister cloistered herself away in her atelier most of the time, only speaking to me when she wanted an update on when the next vanishing would be.
She didn't watch Sirius vanish with me.
I felt more lonely without the stars than I did without her attention. Even if all she ever did was punish me or experiment on me, use me as an assistant, she was still my sister and I loved her dearly, even if I resented all of that.
But the stars were always there for me.
Because dolls have to look up.