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What most people didn't know was that stars shown in the sky at all hours of the day. The Sun just overwhelmed their light during the daylight hours. They watched the Earth spin slowly onward, saw the struggles and successes of everyone's lives.
What even fewer people knew was that sometimes, stars didn't stay in the sky. Sometimes, they fell to Earth. Not meteors, which were rocks that got caught in the atmosphere. These fallen stars were children of starlight and dream dust, who tumbled from their home above and landed, light as down feathers, in the world of humans.
Kluen hadn't meant to fall, however. He had been a young star child and so enthralled by what he saw below. There was a young human, drawing on carts and barrels, painting on walls, sketching on any bit of paper they could get their hands on. Some of the images reminded Kluen of the stars—the real ones. How could a human capture that? Kluen had just wanted a closer look. Just a peek.
And the next thing he knew, he'd fallen from space.
Stars did not age at the same rate as humans. They could fake it, could trick humans' eyes into seeing what they wanted to see, but stars lived for thousands of years. Kluen could throw himself in amongst people as often as he liked, but they would always leave him behind. And watching humans from afar, knowing they would never perceive him, was fine. Being known and then forgotten, or known and then left behind, would hurt. So Kluen didn't try.
One problem with being a star child was that, despite watching humans for years, he had no idea how to interact with them. People would always like him—he looked like what they wanted to see, after all—but he couldn't seem to match their energy. He said the wrong thing, or acted wrong, or didn't get the joke. He didn't know how to socialize in a way that people understood.
Kluen heard the whispers about his personality and knew the human's fascination with him was only skin deep.
He still pretended at being human, still meandered among them, but he didn't look with the intention of giving his heart away. The heart of a star was powerful, he remembered his family telling him. It could create wonders and extend lives. It was not a thing to be given lightly.
…
…
The sea reflected the sky and made the stars seem endless, just like back home. Since he didn't know how to get back to his family, Kluen took frequent trips to beaches and lakes, if only to pretend his siblings and cousins were with him again. He didn't talk to them. He wasn't good at talking. He so often got the words wrong. Besides, they were stars. They could see what happened in his life on Earth easier than he could explain it to them. Being surrounded by their light simply helped ease the loneliness Kluen felt being on his own.
"Oh. Sorry. I didn't know anyone else was here," a voice said. "Oh. It's you."
It was the young man staying at the resort nearby. Daonuea. They had run into each other several times now, always on the beach. He was twenty-three, with straight black hair that was just long enough to drape bangs into his eyes. And those eyes. They reflected starlight even in the daytime.
In Daonuea's arms were an easel, canvas, and a satchel full of art supplies. He had come to the beach to paint for his first summer after college, before he would need to search for a 'real job,' he'd told Kluen upon their first meeting. So far, nighttime painting seemed to be his favorite.
"Are you here to watch the stars, too?" the human asked.
Kluen nodded. "Mm."
He watched Daonuea set up near where Kluen sat on a seaside rock, then looked out at the stars once more. The waves rolled rhythmically into the shore, calming in the constant noise of human life.
Daonuea, too, was calming. In the times they'd met, Daonuea had mostly been quiet while he sketched or painted, but not always. He'd asked Kluen about why he was at the resort, then talked about himself. He'd asked after Kluen's family, and returned each short answer with a long one of his own. He knew about Daonuea's elder brother's forlorn love and medical career and, after a drunken accident, his new love, and about his parents and their jobs and their last anniversary to the mountains instead of a beach.
Somehow, the cadence of Daonuea's voice was soothing, like the waves, like the sound of the songs of distant stars.
"Your name means 'wave,' right?" Daonuea asked, voice gently breaking the quiet.
"Mm," Kluen hummed. Wave like the ocean. Wave like the light from the stars. "And yours is…the north star?"
Daonuea nodded with a hum of his own. He set his palette down and pointed to the sky, to the north star.
"The brightest star that always stays in the same spot, unlike the others. People who are lost trust the north star to guide their way." He lowered his hand and gave a melancholy smile. "My mom wished for me to grow and be able to guide someone to the right route." He shook his head. "I don't know if I can ever be like the star. If I can ever guide someone to the way they want."
The north star was one of the elders. They knew more about humanity in all its hopes and devastation than almost any star. Humans talked to them more than any other star, too, which gave the north star more power. The north star could even grant wishes, if they so chose. Kluen was far too young to accomplish anything similar to that.
"You're a human. Why would you be a guiding star?" Kluen said, drawing his eyes from the sky down to the human beside him.
Daonuea let out a breath of laughter. "You're right." He shrugged. "I guess…I was thinking about all the people who have confessed to me, but who I didn't love in return. No one wants a rejection, even if it's the truth. We all want to hear the response we want."
Nodding, Kluen returned to watching the stars. Daonuea went back to painting. This was how it had been for six days now. They talked, but Daonuea didn't feel the need to constantly fill the silence. Seeing him each day, and each night, getting used to his type of presence, had an altogether different feeling growing in Kluen's chest.
Soon, Daonuea would leave this resort and return home. He would no longer sit with Kluen to watch the stars, or have soft conversation. There had even been a moment, two days before, when another visitor had accosted Kluen and Daonuea had intervened, standing up for Kluen in a way no one had in very, very long time. Sure, Kluen would also need to leave this place someday—sooner rather than later—but the idea of watching Daonuea walk away made Kluen's heart feel bitter and dark.
"Is something wrong?" Daonuea asked several minutes later.
Kluen gave him a curious look and Daonuea shrugged. He kept his eyes fixated on his painting, pointedly not looking in Kluen's direction, when he continued.
"I've noticed that…sometimes…You, er, when you watch the stars…" The brush was poised over the canvas but not touching, a pantomime of painting rather than the action. "Did you know you sort of…glow?"
Glowing? Kluen knew that he sometimes gave off a light when he was happy. He was a star, after all. But to glow here? In the presence of a human? Had he really been that relaxed, that pleased?
Daonuea gave up the act of painting and set his things aside. His hands were shaking too much anyway. "Sorry if I wasn't supposed to—I think it means you're happy, though? So, I mean, you haven't glowed at all tonight, so I…Is something wrong?"
The last time Kluen shone around humans, they'd run from him. He had been forced to leave the town he'd been living in for fifteen years because he'd made a crying child happy and that made him happy. He'd known Daonuea for less than a week, but the human made him feel so at ease, so seen, that he had let his walls down. How unexpected.
Kluen's eyebrows drew together with the knowledge that he might be ruining everything. Again. "I'm a star."
Now Daonuea's brows drew low, but in confusion. "A…star?" He pointed to the sky. "A star?"
A nod, and Kluen wrapped his arms around his knees. "A wave crashes into the beach, but then pulls back into the ocean," he said, lowering his eyes. "I fell to Earth, but never…made it back." He looked longingly up at his relatives.
They lapsed into silence again. No doubt Daonuea was having trouble believing Kluen's words. Most of humanity had no idea that the stars gazed back at them, that they could fall to Earth and take human form. It probably sounded like something out of a fairytale. He wouldn't believe Kluen, or maybe he would, but either way he would leave.
Eventually, Daonuea said, "I've painted a lot of stars. But I think I still need practice painting you."
When Kluen glanced at him curiously, Daonuea turned his canvas around to show what he'd been painting tonight. It was Kluen on the flat rock on the beach, hair ruffled in the breeze, watching the stars. Despite Daonuea's words, Kluen thought his human form had been captured pretty perfectly. And he was glowing.
"The glow looks wrong," Daonuea explained with a wince. "But you didn't do it tonight, so I was relying on memory."
Kluen pressed his lips together. "You…believe me?" he asked.
Daonuea nodded. "Why not?"
"And that's…okay?" Kluen pressed, not understanding.
He knew not all humans reacted badly to encountering new and unexplained things. Some looked at those things with wonder and curiosity. But his experience with people knowing about him was limited and negative. He wasn't used to giving honesty and receiving soft smiles in return.
Daonuea shrugged. "It's definitely strange, but…I don't know. I just…want to know you better." He shook his head. "You can tell me no. It's okay."
Daonuea had been thinking about people confessing and not wanting a rejection. Maybe he had wanted to confess to noticing the glow, but worried how Kluen would react? Or maybe it had nothing to do with Kluen at all. His appearance matched what people wanted to see, but that didn't mean they actually cared about him. And yet…the painting. The Kluen sitting in that painting was the same Kluen he saw in the mirror.
It wasn't just that Kluen felt seen when in Daonuea's presence. He was seen. It shouldn't have been possible, and yet it was. This human he felt happy around wasn't fooled by his star power, wasn't scared by it either.
This time, when Kluen began to glow, he noticed as it lit up Daonuea's face and made his eyes sparkle. The human's lips pulled up at the edges.
"No, that's…that's fine with me," Kluen managed. He cleared his throat and finally stopped hugging his knees. "I want to get to know Daonuea, too."
With a small huff of laughter, Daonuea said, "Call me Nuea." He shook his head. "Actually, call me Dao."
Kluen smiled too. In a quiet, warm voice that brought a flush to Dao's cute cheeks, he said, "Dao."
…
…
fin