Songs of Starlight

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. You can try it, but the sound dies out seconds after its release... you along with it, IF of course you're the sort of being to actually need a steady helping of air, and don't have a helmet to pump you full of its sweet satisfying nutrients. Once everything is gone, this inky emptiness seeps into your insides and suffocates all semblance of life, instead.

That's why I sing. You can hear a hum from lightyears away, and only a tune can make it through a black hole intact. It's like a thread, sewn into the fabric of the sky, swirling with the planets and satellites, thrumming with their turns and beats, sparkling with the stars, flowing near then far. It will buoy you up, like a life jacket in the ocean.

A song will keep you alive out there, keep you from thinking too hard and getting lost and trapped in your own mind when you're stranded for hours in the desolate landscape of a toxic planet, stave away fear when there's a break or a leak in the system with a repair that could mean life and death are seconds away, and do you panic - or do you sing anyway? Hands and breath steadied by the notes that will keep coming or they won't, but if the song needs them then you can't stop them, can't stop then, and then with a few twists and adjustments we're all out of harm's way.

At first I couldn't understand why they'd send me back towards Earth, when I'd been born a child of the Stars, soaring around space stations, never knowing the pull of gravity other than what the hubs emulated. Imitating what our ancestors once knew on the planet they called home.

As we worked on the Moon base, I could see that glorified ball of green and blue beside us every day, yet wondered how anyone could value this over the infinite sparkle of starlight that beckoned from beyond. But I had been told that their planet might not last much longer, how our efforts to build a structure here that was acceptable for life was of utmost priority. And when I imagined the inhabitants who still called this Earth true and only home, their many screams being instantly snuffed into space as their planet died before an escape could be constructed, I worked that much harder on the build they'd assigned us to, knowing how important these results would be.

And if we did not succeed... if we couldn't fast enough... no, what I needed was a song. I tried to pull handfuls of notes from the stars, but they became jumbled, glitter tossed on the floor. Humming anyway, it was a start, if only a distraction from the heavy truth that weighed on my shoulders daily.

Then I heard the song between the moon and the ocean, as I tinkered on the machines, a rhythmic mystery of ebbing and flowing throughout the ages. The call and response, a beautiful duet. It was my support rope, keeping me safely tethered until shift's end.

I listened for its chorus of voices as I lay in bed, of swirling swishing plants and rocks, teeming with creatures endless and unknown. Encased in the shuttle's habitation pod as if in the depths of an underwater cave, its waves methodically melodically soothing as I drifted towards a rest that would soon become sleep. I had picked up a moon rock that day, now examined it closer, and could've sworn that its dust glittered like stars.

I sang the song between the moon and the ocean, dreamed of a palace beneath the sea, and woke up with a seashell in my hand.