Stardust
”It is dying”
”Things die, that’s how things work”
The world they’ve stepped into is dark. Beautiful, endlessly night, the sky an ocean of clouds, the moon a silver disk settled upon their waves. The grass a cool green, nearly blue in the shadows, the occasional glimmer of light as a firefly tumbles low through the cool air.
The doe’s head is turned down, into the glassy water at their hooves.
There’s a fish there, it’s a pale colour, like honey. He isn’t sure if it has always been that way, or if death has begun to drain the colour away. He doesn’t really care either way either.
”It doesn’t make it any less sad”
He grunts, she’s so sentimental about these things, sometimes he understands, but usually, he doesn’t. They both know that death is perfectly gentle, and kind, but it still makes her sad.
The blue one shifts his weight, the mud and the moss around his dainty hooves shifts, though he weighs hardly a thing, it wells up, yet it does not stick to him the way it does to her’s. He lets few things cling to him, sweat, blood, when these things touch him, they don’t slide away the way that the mud and the mire does. Tears, he lets them cling.
”it’s just a fish, I don’t—-”
She looks down at him, her expression is not one of anger, nor is it particularly full of despair, disappointed maybe, something else.
”We’re just stardust” she replies. And he looks at her in turn, and his eyes are boiling, burning. ”You’re a feather, in a locked room, you’re a cloud, you’re tomorrow, and you are forever” his head whips to the fish again, it’s pathetic, gills pumping as it floats on its side, mouth opening and closing as if shocked by the very idea of it all.
”Stars, stars are dead things, they die before you can even see them” he spits, the muscles in his legs tense, and tighten, like he’s going to strike the pretty creature in the water. ”You may as well make wishes on corpses”
His head lowers, touching the tip of his horn to the delicate creature, a flash of pale-gold, and it disappears into the depths.
He moves onwards, silently, stepping atop the water as if it is truly glass.
A smile graces her lips, small, brows furrowing up in the sort of expression a mother gives when their child has told them something innocent but ridiculous. ”You can’t bear to see suffering. How many wishes you must grant. Himmel, Beloved star” she breaths her words.
And the cloud drifts after the star which fell from grace.
