Where the Stars Kiss the Ocean

"We are all just stars that have people names."  It was a part of one of her favorite quotes. Written by - who was it? Nikita Gill. 

"What a time to be remembering someone I never got to meet," mumbling aloud, the mother turned her head from the ship's window that showcased an infinite sea of stars. Her eyes found the only other being in the room: her darling whom she'd just lulled to sleep with a bedtime story. What had it been this night around?

"Ah yes," she thought, "the princess of the sea." 

In the story, they'd lived happily ever after in their castle by the sea. Of course, she'd had to explain what the sea was to a child who'd never known one. 

The mother pursed her lips - lips that held secrets and truths. Secrets like how the child belonged to another race of beings entirely. And truths like how the darling could potentially grow up to be the real princess of a new sea - a role that was rather impossibly attained during the current times.

"The sea," she reminisced in splendor, "it was vast. The water was soft and healing. It cooled me down on the hottest of days and could have frozen me to the bone in the colder months. It so graciously cleaned my dirty skin and indiscriminately quenched my yearning thirst. It sustained life yet also took it. Like how the sea of stars is my home, the sea was once a home for many wondrous creatures - real and myth alike."  The mother's passionate painting of what once was had her spirit calling for the touch of the sea of ole. Well, it sure seemed like a fairy tale now. So much so, even pirates seemed mythical.

But with another glance at the sleeping lump in the corner of the room, she was reminded that not all hope was lost. A small miracle was left in the black, inky depths. And her name was Ocean.

"Heh," the mother smiled for the first time in a while, "you asked me where the sea and its creatures were, my darling, and I did not have an answer. But if you must know, the sea is with the princess, and the creatures live in her castle. She is the mother of many darlings, and she keeps them safe from the dreaded greed and ignorance of man." Her voice filled the room with the cold turbulence of a vicious tide, riddled in the toxicity attained from life with fellow man.

The mother approached Ocean and planted a soft kiss to the child's head, hoping the girl would never grow to know the truth. Know the truth of who the mother was - a killer of the sea. A killer of her fellow man. A burnt out star that only drowned in her "people" name. There were no people.

And her darlings did not live happily ever after in their castle by the sea.