now i'm seeing all the beauty in the broken glass

Months later, Celine explained the Honmoon to her; taught Rumi how to see the glittering blue-shine. 

“Wouldn’t you rather touch these stars?” she’d asked. “See how they shine, just for you?”

The Honmoon is beautiful, Rumi has always thought that, but it’s not the same. When she’d told Celine, she hadn’t smiled as much. 

When Rumi still wanted to go to space, a year later, Celine bought her her first practice sword. And the sword was fun to learn, Rumi enjoyed the next year greatly, but the more intense training got the more Rumi struggled to find enough time to pursue science as well. When she brought this up with Celine, who seemed greatly uncomfortable with the question, Rumi realized what she had been missing; she was not going to be an astronaut. She never was. 

After that Rumi buried her interests in martial arts, voice-training, and Honmoon studies. She spent one evening prying off the stars from her ceiling in the middle of the night, unable to sleep because of the mostly-faded glow of them. 

Rumi didn’t really think about it again until years later.

Zoey loves the ocean. It’s the first thing Rumi learns about her– literally. Zoey shows up to their first meeting with a bright blue bandaid covering most of her knee, decorated with various cartoonish turtles, and when Rumi asks Zoey does not stop talking for possibly a whole hour. She knows about more than just turtles too; Mira tests her one day, just for fun, and Zoey has something to say about almost every creature in the ocean. 

Rumi is reminded of space again; she thinks a lot about the stars and the sun and the moon and the way the tides of the ocean are pulled. She thinks of being stuck in a planet's orbit and the way the Honmoon leads her to them over and over. 

One day, when Zoey is suspiciously quiet and sullen, Rumi drags her into her bedroom that evening. While Rumi is rummaging in her closet, looking for something she hasn't used in years, she gets Zoey to confess that she's homesick. 

“I hope you can feel more at home here,” Rumi says, finally shuffling back into her room and holding a dust-covered machine. Zoey sits up on her bed fully now, clearly more interested in what Rumi is holding than any of her day’s misery. 

“Watcha got there?” she asks. 

Rumi, suddenly nervous, turns her back to her and moves to place it down on her dresser. She blows off the worst of the dust– which makes her sneeze –then moves to plug it in. When she turns it on, it makes a quiet constant whirring sound. 

“I haven’t used this in a long time,” Rumi says, moving back to the lightswitch on her wall. She switches it off.

In the dark of her room, the machine's purpose– a projection –becomes clear; Rumi’s ceiling and walls are lit up in shades of blue weaving in and out of each other. Throughout it all, white spots twinkle in and out in the form of stars. She hears Zoey gasp once, when the light first shuts off, and Rumi breathes a sigh of relief that it worked before going to join her on the bed. 

“Rumi!” Zoey whispers-shouts. “This is beautiful! I didn’t know you had this.” She falls back onto the pillows, pulls Rumi down beside her. They lie side by side, shoulders pressed together, and watch the cheap imitation of the universe. 

They lie in silence for a while before Rumi breaks it, keeping the hushed tone Zoey had started. “I’m sure you already know that we know a lot more about space than the ocean. I don’t know much about the ocean, aside from what you have taught us, but I think maybe…if you get deep down enough, maybe they’re not so dissimilar.” 

“I didn’t know you liked space stuff,” Zoey says. “You never mentioned.” 

Rumi thinks of the dust covering the projector and admits, “I wanted to be an astronaut.” 

Zoey seems delighted by this answer; she lightly shoves against Rumi’s shoulder, grinning. “Cute! Why did you change your mind?” 

Rumi hums softly, barely audible, and stretches a hand lazily above them. She touches the air with intention, stroking the lines of the Honmoon and adding its natural glow to the room; Zoey and Mira are not yet as adept as touching it like this, but Rumi has been for years. 

“Wasn’t really in the cards for me,” Rumi says, letting her hand fall back between them. Without her energy, the strands fade away again. She doesn’t mean to sound sad when she says it– she’s made peace with this –but something must slip through because Zoey covers Rumi’s hand with her own. When Rumi turns her head to look at her, Zoey squeezes once and looks apologetic. 

“I’m sorry you don’t get to go to space,” she says, genuine even though Rumi knows that the best day of Zoey’s life was learning about their destiny. 

Rumi gets lost, for a moment, in just looking at her. From Zoey’s eyes, always a twinkle in them, to her smile, which brightens her day, to the freckles soaring across her cheeks like stars of her own, Rumi thinks she might have her own galaxy right here anyway. She rolls over onto her side to face her fully; Zoey follows suit and keeps a grip on Rumi’s hand all the way.