Writing Championships #5

Cyan Cultists

Prompt: Stars (Fluff to Angst)

Stars.

Pinpricks of light, scattered across the dark expanse of night like freckles dotting a solemn face. Cold enveloped Grian, the small hermit's gaze fixated on the shining dots.

His star-related memories had always been bittersweet. He'd always loved watching them, tracing constellations as if he could touch them, reaching for the stars as if he could dance among them, pointing out patterns to the friends who would stargaze with him. They were always beautiful to him.

His joyful nights soon took a bitter turn after the destruction that was prominent in his past. The deaths were painful to watch, all of those innocent (and some not-so-innocent) souls joined the stars above.

Grian had always believed that the stars were the souls of those who were gone, and had joined the blanket of nighttime above to linger with the once living up there. Constellations were formed from what once were families, or maybe tightly-knit groups of close friends, new sparkles of light joining the sky every time he gazed at it.

Vague memories of all the incidents that had led to so many deaths danced around Grian's mind, reminding him of everything that had once happened. They never seemed to dissipate, coming back clearer and clearer ever night as he watched the stars. As if the stars were connected to the memories. As if he was the one stopping them from fading, by painfully holding onto what remained of them.

Sometimes he would imagine his old friends actually up there. Maybe it wasn't healthy, but it brought him comfort, in some way.

It must be nice up there, he would think.

Sometimes, on some of the harsher days, when his mind just didn't like him, when memories he wished he could forget persued him, when false scenarios tormented him, he would wish he could join the stars. He would wonder if he could become one of those constellations, join his friends in the galaxies up above.

It was a cold thought, almost as chilling as the dark nighttime atmosphere around him, and he would shake it away, not wanting to sink any further into the freezing emotions.

On the nights that clouds obscured the stars, seperating him from the remaints of his friends, Grian would feel lonelier than ever. It was as if that thin veil between him and the sky was an impenetrable wall, although that was far from the case. He still hated it though.

Sometimes he'd accidentally stay awake all night, just admiring the stars. The other hermits would be concerned when he showed up to things with dark bags under his eyes, but he would wave it off as nothing concerning.

He had grown awfully good at lying those past few years.

Sunrise was a different experience that he sometimes observed on those nights gone unskipped. Unfamiliar reds and golds, oranges and yellows, pinks and purples, rising from the horizon as the sun set the world on fire, he never liked. They washed away the darkness. Pushed away the stars he loved. Engulfed the sky in daylight, stopping him from viewing the speckles of light any longer.

He decided that he hated sunrise more than cloudy nights.

—

Grian found himself crying again.

It was nighttime, a beautiful, clear, dark, nighttime. He could see the stars, and that was what pained him. Tears were cold against his cheek, the water combined with the cold of the dark causing him to shiver.

He missed them. Tonight was the clearest it'd been in so long, and just seeing the stars littered across the sky brought back a wave of nostalgia he hadn't experienced in a while. He sank into it, slowly suffocating in melancholy. Memories washed over him. The stars watching him slowly dissolve into images of the past, twinkling sadly, as if disappointed in their inability to aid him.

Faces flashed before him. People that weren't really there- and wouldn't ever be again. Murmurs of false whispers and wisps of things that once were, thoughts uncovered from long ago and shards of joy that would never exist again, they were far too overwhelming.

Tears fell to the grass, the cool droplets shining, reflecting the stars.

Oh, the stars, his friends, the things that caused him so much pain but inflicted so much hope, he could do nothing but watch them and sob. The fake connections between them, forming a bond of constellations, held together as if to remind Grian that he could never experience a bond like that again, not with the ones he so desperately wanted to. Not after everything that happened.

He sat there for longer than he thought. The sun began to peek out through the intertwined branches of trees, and the stars began to fade from sight.

Again, again, they always faded, they always slipped away, removed from his grasp just like his friends from before.

It was a painful reminder.

But the stars always returned the next night, glittering blindingly as if they had never gone, and unlike them, his friends could never. Would never.

So he just sits.

And watches the sky.

Score: 9.5