I Sing Of Chaos And Eternal Night

1900

From atop a rock, I watched as Peter gathered twigs and dried leaves, creating a small pile out of them. Once it stood a few inches off the ground, he whisked out his lighter and held the flame next to it. It caught fire instantly.

"Looks like you're a better cowboy than I thought." I glanced up at him with a smile.

His laugh made my grin grow wider. It wasn't grating or high-pitched like laughs were. Nor was it low and raspy like others. "What's that supposed to mean?" He looked over his shoulder at me. I could see the stars above reflecting in his eyes, making them twinkle.

"I never took a city boy to know how to start a fire." I leaned forward on the rock, resting my elbows on my knees.

"Yeah, well, that's probably the only thing I can do. I'm not much of an outdoorsman." Peter shrugged, taking a seat beside me. "If this were actually the wilderness, I would be dead by now."

"What do you like to do then?" I looked at him, studying each angle and curve of his face. The glow from the fire cast a radiant hue against his fair skin, turning it golden instead of its usual ash wood color. I could make out the faint outline of his cheekbones right above the shadow of stubble around his jaw. The longer I stared, the harder it was to look away.

His gaze shifted up towards the night sky. "Do you know anything about constellations?"

I finally forced my eyes off of him as he turned. "No."

"Here, let's start off easy." He pointed to a pair of stars. "See those? Now, right across from them are another pair. The star on the furthest left, follow it upwards and you'll see a line of stars. That forms the handle of the Big Dipper."

I must have been missing something because I could not see anything. No Big Dipper. No handle. Nothing. There were no shapes up there, only bright balls of gas. "I don't see anything."

"Follow my fingers." He must have caught a glimpse of my squinted eyes since he outlined the shape of a pan with his fingers. "Do you see it now?"

I shook my head. "No. They're nothing but stars in the sky."

He lowered his hand. "True. But they also form shapes like animals and gods."

"How?" I glanced up at him, drawn back to his face. His eyes were filled with softness, turning his brown eyes almost amber.

"I don't know how. Something in our brain lets us see those patterns," he whispered. "I think it's always been that way. Even before civilization, people would look up at the stars and see all sorts of things. We've always tried to make sense of things; see things that weren't really there."

This made me pause for a brief moment. "So they're not real?"

"No." I almost missed his answer from how low his voice dropped. He said nothing more after that, letting the crackling of the fire fill the otherwise silent night. I watched as a flurry of sparks burst into the air before falling back to the earth. It was all I could do.

The rustling of Peter's coat broke the silence as he suddenly turned to me—his face only inches from mine. "Do you know anything about the outside world?"

"No," I answered back. "What is the outside world?"

His eyes went wide as he began to explain, gesturing his hands in the air wildly. "It's nothing like here. There are giant steel buildings that reach several stories high. There are these things called cars that people can drive. They're sort of like wagons, but horses don't pull them. They move on their own. And we have boats that can travel through the water, and planes that can fly through the air. Can you imagine that?"