A Night Under The Stars

We heard the whispers every night without fail, from dusk until dawn.

We didn’t talk about it, as a sort of comfort. I had seen things she could never dream up even on the darkest of nights, and she had known loss like I could not imagine. My friends back when I’d been drafted said I was one of the lucky ones, for having had no one to lose to the sickness. I’d laugh it off—oh, there was no need to tell them how hard it was without someone to live for. They all had sob stories, a lost lover or family member that kept them going—they’d want me to go on, to live my life for them. I envied them for their grief.

But now, I had her—messy pigtails, muddy overalls, a glowing innocence about her despite all that she’d been through at such a young age. I’d give her a smile that could light up a city in hopes of showing her brightness in such a bleak world, even if it was false advertising at best.

She’d always been so curious, so unknowing. I wondered what whispers she heard at night, but feared asking in case she’d return the question. I would be a ray of sunshine for her, but I couldn’t bear to lie, either.

We’d been told over and over to stay inside, close the windows, don’t look outside no matter what you hear—this is how you stay alive. They slept during the day.

We did our best to find shelter before night fell, but some days it wasn’t possible. We’d make do with a tent in the woods, and it had been enough to keep us safe. Or maybe that was wishful thinking, and it was only a matter of time before they caught sight of us, vulnerable in nothing more than a plastic fraud of a shelter.

It was the morning after one of those nights spent camping. They were her favorite nights, because I’d tell her a story before bed. That night, she’d begged and begged for a story about the boy outside—I asked what she meant, smoothed her hair back as she pouted like it was a stupid question. “Don’t you hear him, Otousan?” (This was the name she’d decided on calling me when I vetoed her earlier suggestion of “Flash!”, back when I thought we certainly wouldn’t end up traveling companions and hadn’t had a very solid opportunity to give her my name—I didn’t have half a clue how she came up with it, but I suppose anything is better than going by Flash! for the rest of my life, exclamation mark included.)

“Everyone hears different things. Tell me about him, hm?”

“He always wants to play with me. I tell him we can play when the sun is up, but he’s never there. Maybe he’s running away, too?” She looks a little upset, brow furrowing at the fact that he’s gone by morning.

“Mmm, maybe. You want to hear a story about him?”

“Yeah!” She got excited again, at least, which made my heart swell with warmth.

“Alright, alright. Does he have a name?”

“Uhhhhhhhh, no,” she decided.

“Okay, we’ll call him Roger, how’s that?”

“That’s a dumb name,” she giggled. I threw my hand over my heart, gasping dramatically.

“You wound me!” I cried. “I guess you know best, though. What do you think we should name him?”

She paused, thoughtful, until her eyes lit up with an idea. “Buddy!”

“Okay, his name is Buddy. Do we know anything else about him?”

“He has a puppy!”

“Oh, gee, now we have to name the puppy! What should we call it?”

“Hmph.” This seemed to inconvenience her.

“Edmund?” I continued before she could make fun of this name as well. “I think it’s good. The boy has a dog name, and the dog has a boy name. Just like you have a dog name, Fido.”

“That’s not my name!” she laughed, and I shook my head disappointedly.

“Okay, Spot.”

“Jim-Jim!” she insulted, and I was speechless with hurt. Smiling, I tucked her blanket up to her chin.

“Alright, get settled now, and I’ll tell you the story,” I told her, and she nodded eagerly. “So, once upon a time there was a boy named Buddy. He had a dog named Edmund, and a cat named Dumbo, and an elephant named Mittens.”

“Hey! He doesn’t have a elephant!”

“An,” I correct. “An elephant. When the next word starts with a vowel, you use ‘an’ instead of ‘a’.”

“There’s no cat!” I was thoroughly convinced she completely ignored my grammatical advice.

“Okay, fine, he doesn’t have an elephant or a cat. And hey, you should listen to my valuable education. Somebody’s not in school! Do you want to sound silly your whole life?” I teased.

“But you sound silly, and it’s funny!” She grinned as my jaw dropped.

“Oh, you have gone too far!” I pretended to cry and sniffle before ruffling her hair into a mess I’d definitely have to sort out later, while she laughed and swatted at my hand.

“Otousan!! The story!”

“Alright, but this is your last chance, so no more interruptions!” She stayed silent to prove how trustworthy she was, a sentiment that failed to fool me, and I started the story again. “Edmund was Buddy’s lifelong companion. They’d been born around the same time, so they grew up together, dog and boy.” She raised her hand, waving it around enthusiastically. I facepalmed for show. “Yes?”

“Was he from before the sick?”

“Yes, he was raised before then. He spent his childhood living on a farm, with Edmund. They’d go on adventures together all day long, exploring the forest and the cornfields and falling asleep wherever they ended up. Buddy would use Edmund as a fluffy little pillow and look up at the stars every night, counting them until he’d drift off.”

“Tell me about stars!” Oh, she adored the idea of stars, something she’d probably never see in her lifetime. I did my best to give her different descriptions every time.

“They’re like little flecks of white paint across a black canvas. Tiny lanterns out in the distance of a sky, so dark blue that it looks like a cool black. The sun is a star, you know, but it’s the closest one—that’s why it looks so big.” Her eyes widened with delight. “They’re like a bunch of tiny suns, and when the sun isn’t lighting up the sky, you can see the rest glowing. Billions of them, as far as you can see.” She’s smiling dreamily, starting to droop a little in her sleepiness. “One day, Buddy met Mr. Frog by the stream. Mr. Frog told him he’d dropped his keys and the water had carried them away, and asked him if he could get them for him, because he has much longer legs, you know? Buddy’s a whole human being, Mr. Frog can only hop along.”

“Otousan,” she interrupted, clearly half asleep already. I was pretty jealous of how fast she could doze off after being wide awake.

“Yes?” I asked, but she didn’t say anything else. It was always like that—she’d fall asleep before I finished, which was something of a relief because I never knew how to end a story. I kissed her forehead and settled in next to her, turning out the lantern and slipping away into sleep.

I slept in that morning—my bodily clock typically woke me up pretty early, but maybe I was extra tired from traveling through the forest yesterday rather than the roads. In any case, she was already out of bed, the tent half unzipped behind her. Waking up without her had startled me quite a bit, but then I saw her out there, sleeping in the field, curled up without a care. She must’ve fallen back asleep already from the warmth of the sun. I smiled and let her rest a little longer while I put our supplies back together in my backpack.

Her hair was still a mess from last night, so I pulled out her hairbrush and carefully began to comb through her hair, figuring it’d wake her up gently. It always amazed me how long it took to smooth out such a small girl’s hair, but I did it nonetheless, soft strands carding through my fingers. It was calming, in a way, doing this for her every morning. A routine in a world without many. I pulled them into two pigtails, the way she liked it, and a feeling of dread rose its way up through my throat.

With my heart hammering in my chest, I gave her a gentle nudge, called her name, shook her shoulders, finally. I put my ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat, and oh god, it was there, a reassuring drum cutting through the rushing in my ears. It did little to still the shaking of my hands, and I called for her again, until I was screaming there, screaming at a little girl with two imperfect pigtails to wake the fuck up and stop messing with me.

I got to my feet, eventually, running my hand down my mouth, holding my breath with too much air in my lungs at some fruitless attempt to fight the hollow feeling in my ribcage. I picked up the lantern I’d compared to the stars to two wide eyes so many times, and I threw it as hard as I could, watched it shatter against a tree. Much of our things ended up the same way, and I found myself tearing up her spare clothes with my pocket knife, stabbing, stabbing, stabbing—and I looked back at her, chest rising and falling, face completely peaceful, so blissfully unaware, and I fell to my knees and sobbed for the first time in the better part of ten years.

She wanted to see the stars, didn’t she? That’s what she had done, she’d left at night while I was asleep to look up at the sky with some boy named Buddy. I never should’ve told her there was anything but nightmares out there, oh god, this was all my fault, all my fault, all my fault—

I dropped the knife, blurry eyes trying to focus on the shreds of her little yellow shirt in my hands.

Pull yourself together. This isn’t the time for you to be a fucking sissy. She’s already gone.

These words had saved my life once, when I’d had a gun in my hand, a woman in a strange sort of coma at my feet and an expectation of me.

Wiping the tears from my face, I pulled weeds from the field, the kind she’d give to me in little bouquets ever since I’d told her that flowers used to be given as a token of love. Those little yellow dandelions, the wild violets. I tucked them into the front pocket of her overalls, into the rubber bands holding her pigtails up, into her socks.

In the end, she would be bursting with the flowers I only remembered going unappreciated by society, and she would wander under the stars.

I had never asked about the chain around her neck, of some necklace that had been under her shirt for as long as I could remember. Now, I let myself pull it out like it was the most fragile thing I’d ever touched, and was met with a heart shaped locket with nothing inside. I unclasped it, gingerly, and put it on, because I was selfish enough to take something that had meant so much to her in the name of sentimentality.

Giving up, I fell backward, letting myself fall apart in the grass. Numbly, I stared up at the pocket of blue sky framed by leaves from the surrounding trees, and envied the man who had not known grief.