Pebbles popped as big black tires stumbled over them.
The engine purred once, retiring with a wheeze.
The car door inched open, hesitantly.
A foot dangled out and fell flat,
Where the still-warm sand embraced it.

She began to shift her weight unto the waiting foot,
When the car warned her—bing!
She jumped but yanked out the keys,
Sliding off the seat,
Pressing the rusted door shut with a lock—Click!

Her blue-grey eyes were cast downward,
Avoiding the few silhouettes clustered around the beach,
Huddled around campfires, cloaked in darkness,
Sharing the warmth.
Embracing life.
Utterly naïve.

Her blue-grey eyes had seen the best
And worst
Of humankind.
Things to be proud of and things
Less heartwarming.

She slunk against the shoreline,
Walking on.
Walking on until there were no choruses of laughter,
No flickering fires, no traces of humanity.

Her head tilted back as she sat cross-legged upon a dune,
Her eyes yearning for the sky, for the stars.
And finally, finally, those blue-grey eyes were looking up.
She drew in a breath of the crisp night air,
Letting it whistle through her teeth on its way out.

Twinkle twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are…

The children’s nursery rhyme was murmured through her tight lips,
Her face softening from its tense mask, its defense to reality,
To the “real world” society.

Her eyes panned out across the sky,
Mesmerized by the clusters of stars.

Here a bunch clumped together.
There sprinkled a few, falling behind,
Fallen behind.
The fallen.

There were of course the few who stood out right away.
The colored stars.
Brick house red ones, electric blue ones…
The ones that refused to conform,
To share the common white-hot color of their star brothers.

She sighed.
The ones with personality, spunk.
The North Star.
Now that one was different from its brothers, too.
It was much, much brighter.

She liked to think of it as the leader.
The “wise old man” of the stars.
It in fact was the sole star humans themselves relied on,
Constantly leading them forward in the right direction,
Like the magi to Jerusalem.

She turned her head from the north and looked east.
A blob was missing from the sky.
A patch of stars, just gone.
Missing.
M.I.A.

As she squinted, an outline began to form—
The missing piece of sky was only shadowed by a cloud.
Shadowed, powerless, and unseen, these stars were forgotten.

She bowed her head, and headed back up the beach.
Back to the feisty fires, the innocent laughter.
Back into reality.

“However far we reach into the cosmos,
Our destiny lies not in the stars but on Earth itself,
In our own hands, in our own hearts.”
Nixon’s words were barely audible,
Drifting delicatly on the breeze,
Whispered gently from her surpressed lips.