Late at night, once again sleep escaping them both, Oliver suggests they go for a walk. They set out to the floating dock leading to the lake, lounge in Adirondack chairs overlooking the soundless water, and tilt their heads back to the radiant white loop in the sky. Sitting under a canopy of stars so bright, and seemingly near, it feels like you can reach out and grab them. Oliver muses about stellar evolution. He turns to his side and looks at Sophie. The glow of the moon half illuminates her face.
“You know how stars die?” he says, pensive.
Sophie doesn’t realize he’s looking at her until he speaks. “What?” His question comes in the middle of her haze.
“Supernova,” he explains.
Sophie is so far removed from her own everyday personality that Oliver thinks she’s using up all her willpower to not tumble to the ground or show any indication of weakness. Whatever it is, whatever happens, Sophie is calm. She’s stubborn like that—gloriously, delightfully stubborn—and can keep up the act until the end of things if she wants to. Even though Sophie is determined to make the best of it, Oliver is certain she’ll explode like a radiator cap under pressure at some point, fears for the day that he’ll hear of it.
“Massive stars die when they have exhausted their burning fuel,” he points out, “and the result is a stellar blast that briefly outshines an entire galaxy.”
“You’ve been watching too much Discovery Channel,” she jokes, returning her gaze to the sky.
“Actually, it was Cosmos on Fox. But give it some thought, stars give out large amounts of energy and burn and gleam with their diamond brilliance and then…then nothing.”
Sophie has no clue what hocus-pocus this man says most of the time or how his mind operates. But it’s wonderful, the way he gets her thinking about life.
“When a star dies, it shoots out cosmic dust across the universe, and the remains are scattered all over, creating new stars, new solar systems. We are all formed from this rich elemental material. This is our life. This chair. This lake. You. Me.”
“Stardust,” she says, voice low.
“Exactly.”
“So a star died and gave me life, is that what you’re saying?” She glances at him, her eyebrows raised in disbelief. “How tragic.”
“Well, yes. You live because stars died; it’s that simple. It’s not tragic, it’s science. And I wouldn’t just look at it that way. There’s always a different way to see things.”
“How would you look at it then?”
“There are almost seven billion billion billion atoms inside the human body, yes?”
“Uh…huh…” Who even knows the answer to that? Not her, that’s for sure.
“And almost all atoms are formed in atom forges. Otherwise known as stars.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, Sophie, the stars of long ago are physically a part of us. So, perhaps, a millennia ago someone may have wished upon a star that you are made of.”
Sophie looks at him, his face silhouetted under the radiance of the moon, his eyes the palest blue, and even though the night partially dims his features, she still sees him in a positive light. She gets up and goes to sit on his lap, her back against his chest, his chin on her shoulder, his arms around her.
That night, they sit and talk for hours about nothing and everything until the sun comes up.
Elisa Marie Hopkins was born in California, where she grew up, to Mexican parents. She is an avid reader, Netflix geek, dancing machine, and cat aficionado. What she wants most is to write and share stories that have the power to inspire and motivate, stories that will live in the hearts of readers forever.
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