Star Watcher

After watching the stars all night, she was still out there, in the frozen outdoors, tracking a comet across the sky. It was slow-moving, not as bright as she expected, and then it changed course, heading towards her.

The light stopped in mid-air, pulsing a shade of blue she’d never seen before. She thought, “I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being,” just as the pulsating glow metamorphosed into a human-like form. She wasn’t afraid. It was something she’d always wanted.

“Are you a star?” she asked.

The form pulsated green to yellow.

“Are you from another planet?”

It glowed red, and then it spoke, in a faint voice, gravelly with space dust.

“I’ve been watching the stars from my own planet and noticed you doing the same thing on yours. Shall we watch them together?”

Kim M. Russell, 15th March 2021

silhouette of man standing near body of water during night time

Image by Patrick Boucher on Unsplash

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Prosery: Possibilities, also linked to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #61: Starting a New Relationship

This Monday, Merril is hosting from southern New Jersey where, she says, possibility is in the air. For this month’s Poetics, she ‘went down the rabbit-hole with Brainpickings’, something I read regularly, a poem by Polish poet and translator Wislawa Szymborska called ‘Possibilities’, from which she has chosen this line for us to incorporate into a piece of prose:

“I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.”

It can be flash fiction, nonfiction, or creative nonfiction, but it must be prose longer than 144 words, not including the title.

58 thoughts on “Star Watcher”

  4. I absolutely love, love, love this Kim!!! 😍😍 I too sometimes wonder if there is life anywhere else on other planets in this vast universe that we live in. Do they feel the same way about the moon and stars? What is out there that is yet to be discovered? I agree with Bjorn, the prose works as a children’s tale too! 💝

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  6. Love this starry starry night’s tale! 🙂 Especially this line: then it spoke, in a faint voice, gravelly with space dust.” I have always thought it the height of arrogance that humans think they are the only intelligent beings in the universe. And oh how I wish the stars would speak! 🙂

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  18. Nice pickup line, Kim, watch the stars together. Reminds me of an elderly golfing buddy who met anotherly lady about his age. He invited her to come over to see the Bluebonnet flowers he had blooming alongside his long driveway. I told him that was nice since he had no etchings to show. She came, they had coffee and a nice afternoon but no romance transpired. He died at age 96, still a single widower. Earlier that year he had won first place for his age bracket in our National Senior Golf Tournament.
    . .

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  22. Oh, how lovely! I love this too. I note that you plan to follow the good advice of those who urge you to make it the beginning of a children’s book. Please may we have it here first, as one of your serials, so we don’t have to wait too long for the rest of the story?

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  26. It’s always nice to have interesting new company to bond with over a shared interest. I like how this feels like the beginning of a bigger tale.

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