Avoidance Of Doubt

I first saw them as a child. Distant greetings from a civilisation far beyond the boundaries of time, the stars danced in the cosmic canvas of the ethereal plane of the skies, ensnaring my senses. Dashing wildly into a field, dodging gullies and fences, clambering through labyrinthine hedgerows and bushels, I found my resting place underneath the arms of a fledgling apple tree, watching the twinkles of starlight waltz across the zenith of my vision. I mused at the time that they were all in a frantic contention to reach the horizon, before the sun swallowed them whole.

I grew. I soon learned the follies of daydreaming, or so many supposed 'elders' imparted. During those bittersweet childhood days, I would find the thickest knoll of grass to bury myself in and stare into the heavens, praying that Orion would reveal himself, defiant against some mythical beast in the azure biome, or that Draco would spread its wings, billowing forth a crimson inferno from its gaping maw. It was often that I would hear men and women talking, still too innocent to know, still too young to comprehend the incoming threat to my one source of solace. In hindsight, I wished I had been more disobedient; I so terribly wished at times to be able to recall them, for the memories became nothing but a fond recollection of sensations.

Entering my eighteenth year, I divulged the location of my inner sanctum to a friend who would later become my soul-mate. We naively sprinted across the virgin countryside during night's adolescence, earning ourselves many scratches and new layers of muddied skin in the process...but ah, I remember it so! The sapling had matured into a respectable specimen, as I lay down in my familiar spot on the earth. She lay beside me, Virgo. Perhaps that was what drew me to her; I gazed into her eyes, and saw starlight... I had chosen the night well, as the skies began their show. From Perseus they flew, those wondrous, glittering crystals of pure light. It was on that night that I forsook my love for the heavens, and bequeathed it into Virgo, as I told her that "She was more beautiful than any star in the sky". To this day, I knew that night held something so great, yet also terrible. It was the night that my love for her flourished, but it was also the night that the skies began to flee into the darkness...

It was with great irony that I should've chosen astronomy as my research passage into later life, for the very subject of my enquiry was obfuscated by a miasmic air that grew in opacity by the passing day. Environmentalists heralded this disaster as one of the greatest risks to face humanity...I simply lamented the loss of those stunning lanterns, hanging in the precipice of the atmosphere, the Earth no longer a window into the Universe, but a mirror of our own mindless desire for 'progress'. I spent many years theorising, like many academics, on the greatest cause of this destruction, but all I succeeded in was developing an ever greater sense of loss.

Soon, like the fickle beings humans are, many lost interest, and began to adapt to a lifestyle without the heavens. "God forsook our Earth when we failed to heed his warnings" I was once told. But what warning? Virgo shared my loss, although she never quite understood how much the stars inspired me.

For many years, we shared harmonious unity. Every day I looked into her eyes, I was reminded of a brilliant, far-off nebula, a cradle for stars to enter into being, a portal for the very gods to showcase their brilliant craftsmanship. For so long, I was transfixed, and soon, I was blessed with a daughter, who we named Lyra. I nurtured her through childhood, telling her of 'distant fires, and dragons in the sky, shooting stars the flash before your eyes!' Virgo once had to stop me conjecturing, as I had talked well into the night, and Lyra was fast asleep, hopefully dreaming of a dragon chasing stars across the sky...

How those years passed. It was on the same day that I came to respect Lyra as a woman in her own right, and not just my daughter, that I realised my own fragility. I was not old by any means, but working in an atmospheric testing facility had ailed my lungs. I felt the quiet, but ever present bite of mortality begin to erode my being, and I reclined into myself. I had researched the smog for fifteen years, and had yet to find of a solution to free the skies from the blanket of dust that clung to the atmosphere. In the following years, I grew bitter and twisted, and began to push away the very people who I had once loved.

Virgo and Lyra were always there to remind me of the stars though. They were the two constants in my life, my two twinkling fires. It was they who convinced me to race to this mountain-top, to try and see the stars one last time before I perished from a cancer of the mind. I did not tell them, but I was not expecting to return from my expedition. I was to be taken by the wilderness, in exchange for one fleeting glance...It was a price I was more than willing to pay. I said my farewells to colleagues and friends, and gave my final words to my wife, and to my daughter, now married herself. I told her, above anything, to tell her children about the stars.

My second week on the mountain top would be my last. Boiling water, slowly managing my years of accumulated pains, carrying equipment that would shelter me from the thickening fog, it was as I began to suffer from asphyxia that I glimpsed a faint twinkle, like an old friend waving fro across the horizon. I abandoned all, this was to be my last push. Renewed with a youthful drive, I ran up the hills, over the rocks, and paths, through the swirling poison in the air...It was close...I knew it was close...stars flashed across my vision, I did not know which were real, and which were figments of my crazed mind... I had to know! I had to see if they were real...if they were not some cruel trick of the mind...I had to know, without a doubt, if they were the stars of my childhood...

I forged through the barrier with one final exasperated gasp. Collapsing on a rise, I saw all my old friends once more...I knew I was to die here, watching the stars, but ah... what a good place to die...I blew a kiss to Virgo, and to Lyra, and I watched Draco chase the stars across the sky as I faded into oblivion, and out of this world, into a realm where I could dream of starlight forever more.