I saw it coming down. It was impossibly slow, wreathed in flame against the backdrop of night. There was no sound, no crackling, no shriek of air. Just the hush of autumn wind through almost-bare branches.
Instinct took over and I held out my hands, cupped, as if to catch a rivulet of water toppling off a leaf and not a star falling to earth. The cloak of fire unraveled just as the star struck my left palm and bounced - but I was quick. I closed my hands around it, trapping it like a cricket. The star was warm, smooth, and through the seams of the cage that my hands made I could see a gentle glow. The colorful light swayed from blue to purple to green the color of cold water in a kelp forest. I stood there for a long minute, not daring to pull my hands apart, only hearing the intermittent shhhhhh of cars going by until the star spoke.
“Excuse me? Hello? Thank you? You caught me and that was very nice, so thank you. Could you give me a little bit of air though?”
I slid one hand beneath the other, exposing the star to the sky from which it had fallen. She looked much like a pebble of polished quartz, milky and glass-like. And she glowed; bright blue like a summer sky, then magenta, then emerald.
“Thank you, thank you. Your hands are soft, but I couldn’t see you from in there. This is much better. Now I know where I’ve landed.”
The star flickered.
“Um. Where have I landed…?”
Her voice was so small. I lifted the star up, closer to my face so that I could whisper - it didn’t feel right to speak loudly to such a little thing.
“This is my backyard. We’re in Marietta. This is upstate New York. Uh. In the United States. Earth.”
“Oh,” the star gasped, “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“This isn’t where I meant to go. I was on my way to the center of the Milky Way, and I suppose I went off course. If I’m on Earth, then I’m not there yet. Oh shoot, oh shimmer,” the star whimpered. A sound like a sparkler burning down, soft and fuzzy like radio static, began to drift around the light in my hands.
I had never heard a star cry before, and I didn’t know what to say. How does one comfort a star? It was too small to hug, and without a mouth to drink with, I felt it would be rude to offer her a warm cup of tea. So I rocked her, gently, and the star’s cries began to subside.
“Hey, I know things seem bad, but it will be alright!” I said and felt terrible for the lie. It will be alright is what people say when they have no idea if anything will ever be alright, but they want you to stop crying before they cry, too.
“Why? How?” the star sniffled.
I blurted the first thing that came to mind.
“I’ll just throw you back up into the sky! Then you can fly around the Earth and continue on your way to the center of the galaxy.”
“Stars can’t fly. We can only fall. No, no, you can’t just toss me back up into the sky. I’ll fall right back. Oh, but wait! I know what you can do. Please, you need to throw me off the edge of the Earth so that I can keep going.”
I blinked at the little star, wondering how to explain to her the flaw in that request. There was no edge of the earth. And, to even attempt to do as the star asked, I’d have to throw her toward the horizon with enough force to rival a rocket launch. What the star was asking was impossible!
“You look very sad,” the star whispered.
“I don’t think I can do what you need me to do,” I replied.
The star was quiet then, for a very long time, but her light continued to cycle like an aurora borealis in miniature, and the cars continued to make hushing sounds as they drove by our backyard. Somewhere, far away, I heard a door close and a muffled, shouted greeting.
“Well, that’s impossible,” the star finally said. “Nothing can stay in one place forever. Everything, everywhere, is always moving. Changing. It’s a rule. You will not always be here, holding me, and the world, even as we speak, is soaring through the dark. So, of course I can leave this planet. I will get back to my journey. I have to. And, besides, my request is easy to fulfill. I promise.”
“But how? I can’t throw you off the edge of the Earth. I can hardly throw a baseball with enough strength to get it from one end of the lawn to the other.”
“Oh,” the star said, and the laugh in her voice was unmistakable. “Of course that would be impossible. You’re very silly…”
“Then what do you mean?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the blush of irritation from my cheeks. “How do you expect me to throw you off the edge of the earth?”
“I thought I saw the sky as I was falling down. My friends, beneath me.”
I looked around and caught the reflection of porch lights on the lake across the street.
“Do you mean the water? You saw the reflection of the sky in the lake over there?”
“Yes!” The star chirped. “Toss me off the edge of the earth so that I can keep falling into the sky.”
I opened my mouth to tell the fallen star that it didn’t work like that. At the bottom of the lake was just mud, and the reflection of the night sky on the lake was not the sky itself. But the certainty with which she gave the instruction caused me to pause. Who was I to tell a star the right way to fall?
Still, I asked, “Are you sure? You won’t just end up in the mud and the weeds at the bottom of the lake?”
“You are a very silly thing to think that a reflection can't be anything other than what it reflects. If you toss me into the sky’s mirror, I will fall back into the night, and on, and on, until I get to where I’m going.”
While the star explained, I walked around the house, and out to the street with her glowing light cupped almost against my chest. I felt a funny little hum in my heart. Like a song. It reminded me of holding my child while they slept.
“I’m going to trust that you know what you’re doing,” I said to the star, as much to convince myself as to express my confidence in the plan.
“Thank you,” the star said, and we were both silent as I picked my way down a driveway and between two sleeping houses. I heard the slosh of water, and after a dozen more steps I could feel the rocky sand beneath my boots.
It was time to say goodbye, and I hesitated. Holding the star out a bit so that I could get a better look at her, I asked, “Why are you trying to get to the center of the Milky Way, anyway? What’s there?”
The star’s answer came after a thoughtful pause. “A great void. A darkness that consumes everything that approaches it.”
Instinctively I pulled the star closer to my chest. “But you’ll be swallowed up! You’ll disappear! Why would you ever want to go there?”
“What an assumption!” the star laughed. “There was darkness before there was ever light. The dark is where light grows.”
“Are you going to die?”
“Of course not,” The star scoffed, and then seeing my frown, continued gently, “There’s no such thing. That’s a rule, too, you know. Just like nothing can stay the same forever, nothing ever dies. It just changes. And since I’ve fallen out of the sky, it’s time for me to change, too.”
There was no arguing with her tone which was tinged with a weariness I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps falling was harder work than I could imagine. I whispered my goodbyes, and the star thanked me for catching her. I wished the star luck on her journey, and she wished me the same.
After filling my eyes with her glow for a few more moments, I gave the star a gentle toss toward the water, expecting to see the light sink and settle. Instead, it blinked out, as if I had tossed a glowing ember into the lake. Then, just above the horizon, I saw her. She flared up out of the darkness and resumed her fall through the night sky.
When I could no longer see her I walked back between the dark houses, across the street, and up to the front door of my home, while my imagination wandered and wondered into a free-fall. I felt myself tumbling alongside the star, past bright new sparks of light, past other worlds, past shimmering beings whose brightness was growing tired and those who had only just begun shining. We fell all the way to the center of the galaxy, into the open arms of the darkness that waited there.
And as I stepped inside, I wondered what would come next.
