Asteria

Love of a daughter heals the loss of a sun, she once heard it said. She agrees with it, in her own way – love of her daughter cured, although she rejects the term 'cured', her unceasing love of the stars and moon. The sun, she had never been able to love the way she had the night sky, though she always appreciated its beauty.

Grace, her friends call her. But she has another, a secret name. Since her eighteenth birthday she's kept it, loved and cherished it as if she had been born to it, though she never tell another what it was.

Her husband, she meets at an observatory, where she works part time. She barely notices his courting until he proposes, with the ring of Saturn itself as a backdrop. A proposal of eternal love against a background of the moon and stars she loves best; she can't refuse.

They're happy, together, absorbed in the wonders of the night sky. He accepts her affection, knowing it to be pure friendship, knowing she cannot love as he loves. That is why he adores her.

Then the child comes – a beautiful girl. Skin the colour of the pale moon itself, eyes as dark as a thousand galaxies, with millions of brilliantly twinkling stars shining in their depths. Selene, her parents call her.

With a daughter that shines brighter than the brightest star, more captivating than the full moon, Grace learns to love one other than the galaxies above her.

Her girl is a mere baby, as she was the first time Grace held her in her arms. Eyes wide with the wonders only she can see, never ceasing to marvel in the endless possibilities of the night sky.

At the same time, she is an adult. A dreamer, like her mother, she nevertheless manages to function in an ordinary world. Her head in the clouds, her mind elsewhere, but ready to listen and focus when recalled to the physical world.

A teenager, she shuts herself inside her room for hours, door locked, never answering when called. Sometimes, when she enters a room with that casual smile, Grace can see the adult she was, and the child she will become.

She remembers it all so vividly it seems as if all are the same, happening at once. Overlapping in an complex, elegant dance of nature that ceases to exist within time and space, refusing to sort itself into rational events in linear time, asking why should it? To the moon and stars, all time is simultaneous. Why should it be otherwise?

愛

Born in the haunting moonlight, what else will she be, but a child of the moon and stars?

As a baby, she'll be restless until night, until the moon shows its shy face. The stars will ease her anger, her sadness, her pain, as even her parents will not. As if she knows the moon is her true mother, the stars her siblings, the eternal gleam of forgotten galaxies her home.

She will not ask to be this way; she'll be captured by the night's captivating shine. The stars will take her in as their own, and the moon will know her as a kindred spirit. From that moment, she will be lost to humanity.

Granted, her first word will be 'mumma', but it will be said to the sky, to the endless night. Her parents will celebrate her words, for they'll know she loves them, in her own way. Though it is the moon she will lift her eyes to in infant prayer, it is her parents who will give her life to see it. She'll be grateful, and she will love, and that will be all they ask for.

At four, she'll be a silent, dreamy child. Her head in the stars, her mind on the moon. She'll have no friends – in the day, the quiet promise of night will keep her going until the stars twinkle once again, and then she'll have all the friends she can wish for.

When rain cascades down, making even the leaves droop their solemn heads, she will stand outside without even a coat, her face upturned to the beauty of the moon, and no-one will know if the water in her eyes is rain or tears. When wind threatens to tear the houses apart, felling trees and biting the infant's cheeks, she will wrap her arms around herself, root herself to the ground, and no-one will be able to unroot her until the moon has hidden itself modestly behind a hill or thick forest. Nothing will cease her smile – not the bitterest late winter night, nor the hottest midsummer's eve – when her thoughts turn to her love.

At ten, she'll sit in the midnight mist when the glow of the moon is hazy and covered in wreaths of smoky silver clouds. With pencil and paper in each hand, her eyes will fix on the sky. Sketching for hours, she'll never once look down, never once wonder at the pure, raw beauty she'll encapsulate on the page.

Her classmates will call her a dreamer; her friends will be those who watch from afar, too embarrassed by their own fascination to approach her. In class, she'll be a model student, but no matter her good grades, her seemingly attentive gaze and instant answer when tested, her mind will always be elsewhere. Elsewhere will always be elsewhere – as however her watchers try to catch her attention by talk of stars, moons, galaxies and undiscovered space, her attention will be always... elsewhere.

At fourteen, she will be known in her school as the philosophical one, the thinker. Life will teach her the basics of social graces, but most of its teachings, she'll ignore. When asked a question, she will only answer if it pleases her, giving a small, friendly smile to the questioner.

“Why do you love stars so much? They're just stars,” the girl will ask her once.

“Exactly. They're just stars, and they don't let anyone change them.”

And to another question: “It's endless. Isn't it fascinating? Imagine how many possibilities lay up there, too far away for us to see or even think of. Could there be other intelligent life? Could we be the only inhabited planet in the universe? The best part is, we'll never know what's true and what isn't. And it's wonderful that way, because until we know the truth, all the possibilities are real.”

On her eighteenth birthday, she'll give herself a new name. She isn't Grace, she'll tell her indulgent parents. Her name is Asteria, after the Greek goddess of the stars.