illphated
You and the Stars…
The Texas sun bled across the horizon, painting the mesas in shades of bruised purple and fiery orange. Elara stood on the porch of her small ranch house, a silhouette against the dying light, her hand resting on the sleek, black head of her dog, Orion. The air, thick with the scent of dust and creosote, was cooling, and the first, shy stars were beginning to prick the darkening canvas above.
It was this time of day that always brought him back to her. Leo.
He had been a man of the sky, a pilot with eyes the color of a noon-day heaven and a laugh that could chase away the desert chill. He hadn’t belonged to the dusty earth she loved; he belonged to the wind and the clouds and the infinite, starry expanse.
She remembered the night he gave her Orion, then just a clumsy-pawed puppy. They had been lying on a blanket spread over the cracked earth, miles from any town, the Milky Way a brilliant, shimmering river overhead.
“See that?” Leo had whispered, his arm around her as he pointed a finger upward. “That’s Canis Major, the Great Dog. He follows his master, Orion the Hunter, across the sky for eternity.” He had smiled, his teeth a flash of white in the starlight. “This little guy will be your loyal dog, your own Orion. A piece of the heavens to keep you company when I’m up there.”
He’d kissed her then, a promise sealed under the celestial gaze of a billion suns. He spoke of their future in grand, cosmic terms. Their love, he’d said, was a constellation, a fixed point in the chaos of the universe.
The war had been the chaos he hadn’t accounted for. The telegram came on a Tuesday, its words as stark and cruel as the midday sun. His plane, a silver bird meant for soaring, had been torn from the sky over an ocean she couldn’t even imagine. He was gone, returned to the vast, empty heavens he had so adored.
Now, the sky was his tomb and his monument.
Orion whined softly, nudging his head against her hand, his dark eyes reflecting the nascent starlight. He was all she had left of Leo, a living, breathing piece of a love story written in the stars and cut short by the earth.
Elara looked from the last sliver of sun to the brilliant diamond of Venus, hanging low in the west. A tear traced a path through the day’s grime on her cheek. She pulled the dog closer, his warmth a small anchor in the vast loneliness of the desert.
“He was right, boy,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. She gazed up at the sprawling, indifferent cosmos, at the place where her love now resided.
“My love was meant for you,” she murmured to the loyal dog at her side, “and the stars.”
