Teeny Tiny Stories

Stardust

Ari liked the stars, Leo did not. The brothers both saw them as beautiful, but where Ari viewed them with wonder, Leo saw them as distant and cold. It reminded him of his grandmother. She was like that, distant, cold, and unfeeling, although he never held that against her. It was life that had made her that way, life was the one who was harsh and cold.Leo was lost in thought, staring out the single circular window in the room he and his brother shared.
Glancing up into the sky, he idly wondered what the constellations looked like on earth, the planet his grandmother was born and raised on. He'd heard there was only one moon there, and that it was bigger than the ones he could see now. It would be strange having only one moon when he grew up seeing two and a half rising in the sky each night.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a large, heavy pillow crashing into the back of his head. He turned around with an indignant huff to chuck the offending pillow back at his twin brother, Ari, who lay on his bed, propped up on his elbow.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were deaf!" Ari laughed. "I called your name several times and you just kept on staring out the window like some lovesick puppy!"

Leo scoffed, "Me the lovesick one? Mister 'I flirt with the princess every time she's within earshot'."

He managed to dodge the flying pillow once again thrown in his direction.

Ari flopped back into his bed with a dramatic sigh. "Its not my fault shes so pretty. And what would you know about being in love? Sir 'I have no social life and no friends except for this one weirdo obsessed with plants'."

Leo's retort was cut off by a shout from bellow to quiet down. Ari smirked and switched off his light, "Get some sleep kid, we have an early day tomorrow."

Leo frowned at the nickname. "We're twins idiot." He muttered under his breath.

"I'm still the older one." Came the muffled reply.

Rolling his eyes and mimicking his brothers words with an overly exaggerated motion of his hands, Leo hopped off the window seat he was planted on and crawled into his own bed. Taking one last glance out the window, he smiled wistfully and flipped off his own light.

High above the planet, among the stars in the distant abyss, a small, shining, multi-colored crack appeared. Splitting the sky and growing larger and brighter each second, until it outshone even the brightest star. Yet even as it reached the epitome of grandeur, it vanished, leaving only a lucky few on the planet below a witness to its foreign beauty. Left in its place, a small, limp figure began to descend, beckoned into the dangerous embrace of gravity.