Pin Your Fancies To A Star.

"Why had she said that thing about the star? Why did dusk & fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?”

"She turned her face upward to the sky between the swaying fir tops and he saw the reflection of a star in her eyes."

~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

I write.

Of the evening her fancies were pinned to a star dancing on the broken wisps of a sunset legion of clouds, (a star she would forever claim as their star) something-something changed the night he introduced it to her.

“Beetlejuice.”

“Oh, why really? Beetle-Juice?” She turned her eyes wonderingly up at him.

“I’m pretty sure. Except, I used to think it was pronounced Beetle-Gus… but they were like nope, its Beetle-Juice.” He gave a little laugh like he always did, whether what he said was particularly funny or not —she guessed that life just amused him. “Though, I’m not incredibly sure.. That could be the other one, Adep…”

“No,” She cut him off, “don’t look it up. That’s Beetle-Juice, I want to believe it. Now every time I see that star, I can say ‘Hello Beetle-Juice!’ because I know his name.” She gave a little satisfactory nod to the sky as she said this. It felt odd to be standing a little beside, a little in front of him like this… their shoulders close as they gazed together.

Again he laughed “Well, alright.”

The pink arrows of sunset fire across the sky were growing dimmer, while it drew on a more brooding, more true blue in the clouds around them. “Wait, but does Beetle-Juice stay there all the time? or does he move?”

“Well, by the next century he will have shifted to over there.” He pointed past her to a little patch in the sky where two stars dimly sparkled.

“Oh, okay. So in our lifetimes he’ll be right there. That’s good.” She smiled (or had she really ever stopped?), she liked to think Beetle-Juice would be trustworthy and stationary.

“This reminds me of a poem I read once… and the one part ‘Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star.’ Isn’t it true? Isn’t it beautiful?” She turned to him and he nodded, his eyes smiling, dancing.

Her words stopped and a little silence started to settle, but not an uncomfortable silence for once. A car drove by- “What a romantic picture we must make right now…” she pondered, she felt like she was in a book somehow, and somehow it was quite as wonderful too. Quite.

“It’s a manta ray now. Do you see it?” He waved his hands at the sky outlining one dark cloud sprawling above the mountains.

“Oooh! Yes, I do! Definitely a manta ray, not an Octopus.”

“Hey, it did look like one before. The clouds have just flattened out!”

She gave a little laugh, “Uh, no. And anyways, it’s definitely on the verge of becoming a submarine soon.”

She described to him that glassy underwater adventurer she saw in the sky, and then he found a Cheshire cat smiling down on them, only by the time she recognized it— it was frowning… until it became a Loch-ness monster. And so they stood, drawing pictures in the sky— and pinning them there in permanence with stars of hopes and dreams.