Stars

Once, during one of the halves of the year when I was actually on Earth, my neighbor asked me why I was gone so often. If I were to tell her the whole story, she wouldn’t have understood (most people don’t) so I just recited the simple version.

“I’m a star shiner,” I told her. Just as expected, she winced and patted me on the back “sympathetically.”

The whole story would have taken too long and her attention span was far too small. They wouldn’t comprehend my love for shining the stars, the big silence of space. When I get sent into the skies with my trusty bucket and washcloth, I leave behind the noise and chaos.

Sometimes I look back and pity the people stuck on Earth. They say it used to be a beautiful place with white clouds and clear water. Now the atmosphere is black with smog and pollution, and the lakes and oceans are bodies of dirty brown sludge. Star shining takes me away from that, to a nicer place.

My life is simple; I stay up there for half a year, cleaning the stars and hopping from comet to comet to get around. Every once in a while, they locate me and refresh my water supply, but usually, it’s just me and the stars.

I’m not alone, though; the stars wake up every few decades and since I’ve been coming around, they wake up far more often now. I tell them my stories and in return, I get to listen to theirs. They dream of other dimensions and when they’re subconscious they “see” things that pass by. They’ve been around since the beginning of time, so they never run out of interesting tales.

Sometimes I chance upon a younger star that still has its own solar system and I get to see other planets. I never actually go on them of course; that would be encroaching upon foreign territory!

The middle-aged stars are okay. They complain about nonsensical things like growing larger in size (even though that’s natural!) They are very understanding though. When I explain why I dislike the time-oriented culture, they murmur sympathetically. They themselves are not motile so the expansion of the universe carries them to new places; they have a worriless lifestyle and all the time in the world.

My favorite stars, however, are the wrinkly old ones. There’s a deep satisfaction in cleaning out every fold and crevice of their exteriors. This way, it takes longer to clean them and there is more time to talk and understand each other. It’s like having parents that never criticize you and don’t expect too much.

Eventually, the return ship locates me (no matter how hard I try to avoid it) and I’m forced to return to Earth. I’m not allowed to stay up there too long or the company might be sued for ‘overworking’ me. Getting through the six months on Earth is always an arduous task for me, but I make it through. It’s always a comfort knowing that eventually, I’ll be back up there, just me and the stars.

—————-

This is an original story by me. Steal and you die. (But comments are loved. <3)
p.s. I also uploaded this on my deviantArt: lazuri98.deviantart.com

p.p.s. I keep trying to fix the format but it keeps unfixing itself. ;-;