“You know, there’s a star in the sky for every wish on the ground,” her grandmother whispered, her wink not visible by the eye, but easy to hear from her voice.
Alesia and her grandmother lay in the grass of her parent’s pasture, looking up at the sky dotted with stars. Alesia smiled as she noticed that she could see her breath, confirming that winter had finally come. Behind her she could hear one of her parent’s goats chewing on his grassy dinner. The crisp, winter air was filled with the smell of cooking meat as her sister began making dinner, the door to the kitchen open so she didn’t get too hot. Alesia was supposed to be inside helping her sister, but she’d been told she was a bit more of a bother than a help, so she’d been released from duty.
“Which one is meant for me?” she asked, tracing the constellations with her eyes.
“Well, I don’t think anyone can know for sure which one is theirs. I don’t think most people even know what their true wish is,” her grandmother answered.
“Do you know what your true wish is?”
“Oh, yes, my wish was granted long ago, but at the time, I didn’t realize it was what I truly wanted. In truth, it was what I desperately needed.”
“What was it?”
“That is a story for another time, young one. A story that I’m sure you’ll learn of soon enough, but for now, we should be getting back to the house. I’m sure that dinner’s almost ready,” her grandmother said, moving to stand up.
Alesia nodded. She stood, the cold air making her joints slower. She looked towards the mountains that surrounded their valley home. The small village they lived near resided in what Alesia thought was a mountain bowl; in reality, the mountains simply formed a circle, almost completely enclosing the people who lived there in. A few of the mountain tops were already capped with snow, but it had yet to reach the valley. The pastures were still dotted with the flowers that always grew during the fall, though they would soon die with the cold.
She took one last look at the stars, again wondering which one was meant for her, before following her grandmother towards their cabin.
Alesia sighed as she set down her paintbrush, staring at the canvas in front of her. It wasn’t turning out how she saw it in her head, though everyone she had talked to had said they loved it. She stood, setting her pallet and brush on the table before making her way across her apartment.
There wasn’t much in her apartment, as she had been told that minimalism was best for where she lived. Her living room consisted of a television set and a couch. In her opinion, there was a lot of empty space in the room, but she had to admit it had a clean feeling to it, as well. Her bedroom only had a bed, and her kitchen was the most cluttered part of her home, as she had filled it with all the supplies she could ever need for her love of baking. Her walls, however, were filled with paintings. Most of them depicted stars, though there were a few family portraits. She frowned as she thought about how long it had been since she had visited her family.
She made her way to her balcony, sliding the door open and breathing in the crisp wintry air, tainted with the smell of exhaust. The sound of cars braking and honking enveloped her, along with the occasional shouting from some of the people still walking at that time of night. She looked down to find the streets as they almost always were: filled with traffic. The roofs were covered in snow, and it was cold enough that Alesia could see her own breath.
She looked up, thinking of her grandmother and the starry skies that they had so often gazed at while lying in the grassy pasture when Alesia was younger. Sometimes they had stayed out there for hours, and there had been a few times when Alesia had fallen asleep, staying outside for the whole night. Her parents had never really minded her love of the stars, so long as she had finished her responsibilities before she went outside to look at them. Almost every time she went outside to see them, her grandmother had been there, telling her the stories that had shaped the stars.
Those were some of her best childhood memories, but when she looked up now, all she saw were starless skies.
Bethany Webb is a student with a love of travel, art, and writing. Bethany has previously published non-fiction in the Behemoth and the Blue Marble Review.
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