Queen of Nothing

16. Orion

I halfway rolled off of him, reaching for my phone, when he caught my hand,

"Don't."

I frowned at him, "Why not?"

"Do you really want to get back?" his eyes searched mine, pleading.

I really didn't.

I checked my phone instead of responding,

K: where are you?

M: went on a walk

K: did u srsly ditch ur own birthday party

I turned my phone off, contemplated flinging it into the trees.

"I don't," I admitted, wholly surprised by my own honesty, "I really don't."

We laid there in silence, side by side, looking up at the sky. I felt his shoulder brush mine, and I wanted more than anything to roll back into him, feel the planes of his stomach, his chest, his arms underneath me. Silence had always been uneasy for me, a reminder of punishment or anger, a void of miscommunication.

Yet somehow, I was perfectly content sitting in there, on the outskirts of the town, where the sky met the tree tops. 

"Pegasus," I pointed out the constellation.

I felt him return his attention to the sky, "Even more importantly, Orion."

"Orion? Where?" I squinted my eyes to see what he was talking about.

"Look" he pointed out a cluster that looked like a block character holding a bow and arrow, "it's the dude who was obsessed with Artemis. Y'know, in greek mythology."

I laughed, before nudging him with my shoulder, "There he is. I knew you were still nerdy, deep down."

"Ha ha," he mock laughed, "knowing about Orion doesn't make me a nerd."

"Okay tell me about Orion then," I whispered, "nerd."

He nudged me back, and I blushed deeply.

"I don't remember much except that Artemis is a maiden, swore off boys and all that. But Orion was obsessed with her and chased her relentlessly," he said, tracing the celestial figure with his finger. "So, to keep him away, Artemis sent a giant scorpion after him. The scorpion stung him, and in the end, both Orion and the scorpion were placed in the sky as constellations. They're still chasing each other, just like in the myth."

"Well, love triangles never worked anyways," I joked. I felt him smile. "I remember you used to be obsessed with those stories."

"If I recall correctly, so were you," he looked at me, "do you remember the constellations we'd make up?" 

I laughed, "Yeah. I'd use a flashlight to try and find them in the sky and then make up names of constellations." 

I felt him shake with laughter, "Yeah, remember unicorntopia?"

I pointed at a random constellation, "Over there, but you can't see it. I don't have my seeing-eye flashlight."

He let out a chuckle, "It feels like a lifetime ago. We were babies." 

"We were," I admitted, my gaze roving over the stars, "and our lives were so different."

"But unicorntopia is still the same," he pointed out, "it's all just a map. A map of where we've been, where we'll go. The universe is all just a memory." 

It was, wasn't it? If I closed my eyes, I could transport back to Milo's backyard, to the thin tent we'd try to camp out in, until we both fell asleep and had to be carried inside by his mother. After all, the job of inventing new constellations was incredibly taxing on two eight year olds that set out on a quest to name them all.