#anon's plot

Prompt from anon:

Well, my idea is this.

A whimsical sort of fairy tale story starring a young boy and his mother, a young barmaid with long red hair and a big, tremendously fat cigar in her mouth, the lit tip twinkling like a star.

One night, while she's tucking him into bed, they notice that there's something wrong with the stars in the sky. They're all in the wrong spots, and the constellations are all jumbled up.

They set out to solve the problem, eventually making their way to the town's old abandoned observatory. After some investigation, they find out that the telescop is actually a giant cannon aimed at the sky. That's when they devise a plan. The mother puts the boy into the cannon, and soon after lights the fuse with her cigar, plugging her ears and wishing her son luck as he's fired off into the night sky, vanishing with a twinkle.

While among the stars, the boys manages to solve the problem and fix all the constellations, how he does so is up to you. After wards, he falls back to earth as a shooting star, and his mother catches him in her arms and gives him a hug, telling him that she's proud of him.

The young boy waited up every night for his mother’s return from her job as a barmaid. He stood by the window and watched for the glowing embers of the end of her cigar. He liked to pretend it was a star as it twinkled in the darkness. Then he would race out of the house to meet it. His mother had always had a fondness for stargazing, and he yearned to be closer to the night sky, close enough to tell his mother what it was like up there in the cosmos. Though they were apart all day, the barmaid was always sure to tuck her son in at bedtime. Together, they would trace constellations with their fingers. The barmaid would recount the tales of the great heroes, great villains, and great tragedies depicted there. She took long drags from her fat cigar, the smooth clouds of smoke curling into forms to match her words. Her stories calmed the boy to sleep. Like the one about Cassiopeia, whose punishment for boasting of beauty greater than the nymphs was to be chained to the sky. Or Draco, who was placed among the stars by Hera after being defeated by Heracles during his 12 trials.

On this particular night, the boy planned to ask his mother to point out his favorite, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. He pictured how her voice would sound while telling their tale, low and tired. “There was once a beautiful nymph named Callisto,” she would begin, and the boy’s eyes would follow the mesmerizing clouds of cigar smoke as they took the shape of a woman. “One day, the great god Zeus saw Callisto bathing and was completely taken with her. After some time, she bore him a son named Arcas.” In the smoke, the shape of Zeus would appear next to the woman and a small bundle would form in her arms. “Zeus’ wife, Hera, furious about the affair, turned Callisto into a bear as punishment.” The smoke would begin to swirl dizzyingly fast to keep up with her words. The pictures would be so realistic that the boy would want to reach out and stroke the soft fur of the bear, but his hand would only cut through the image. “Thus, she was parted from her illegitimate son, who grew up as a hunter. After many years of separation, Callisto saw her son in the woods and ran to him, overjoyed at the reunion. Her son, unable to recognize her in the form of a bear, shot an arrow at her. Zeus interceded, changing Arcas into a bear to prevent any harm from coming to Callisto. Then, he grabbed them by their tails and hurled them into the sky where they could be together safely.” After the dramatic scene had played out, the smoke would vanish slowly.

The boy liked this story because when she finished telling it, his mother would put out her cigar, rub her thumb gently across his cheek, and say, “Maybe one day we will be together in the stars too, my little bear.” He hoped that was true. He could not imagine a happier fate than being with his mother among the constellations.

But when he finally snuggled into his blankets and looked out at the night sky with his mother, preparing to hear his favorite story once more, the telltale forms of the big and little dipper were nowhere to be found. In fact, neither the boy nor his mother could make out a single constellation in the large jumble of stars splattered across the sky.

“Mama, what happened to the stars?” the boy asked.

The barmaid replied, “I’m not sure. Do you want to find out?”

The boy nodded and scrambled out of his bed. His mother held his hand in one of hers, her cigar still trailing thin blue smoke in the other. She led him through town to an abandoned observatory they sometimes snuck into on nights the barmaid came home a little earlier. They rushed up the stairs and into the dome-shaped room where the telescope sat, faithfully trained toward the heavens. The boy looked through the eyepiece. He thought he saw the three bright stars of Orion’s belt, but they were distant and parted by clusters of smaller stars that didn’t belong there. With a troubled expression, the boy explained what he was seeing.

“Perhaps there is something wrong with the telescope?” the barmaid suggested.

The boy searched it over and noticed a string hanging from the telescope that he had not seen before. “What this for?” he asked.

The barmaid inspected the telescope carefully. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except there was no lens covering the end. It was completely open. She looked again at the string her son had pointed out, and realized it was not a simply a string but a fuse.

“I think this is a cannon.”

“A cannon?”

“Yes.” The barmaid paused, considering the trajectory of it. “I think you could reach the stars with this.”

The boys eyes widened. “Really?”

“Do you think you can remember all of the constellations I’ve taught you.”

The boy nodded seriously. So the barmaid and the boy agreed that they would use the cannon to send the boy into the sky and fix the constellations.

“But we don’t have a match,” the barmaid said.

The boy pointed to her still-lit cigar. The barmaid smiled at his ingenuity as she helped him into the cannon and wished him luck. Then she leaned forward, cigar dangling from her lips as she covered her ears with her hands. The fuse lit, and the cannon fired. The boy launched into the air with a bang. He felt himself soaring higher and higher, the stars drawing closer and closer. From the ground, his mother watched him until he was barely a twinkle in the distance.

Once he was among the stars, it didn’t take long before he understood the issue. The stars were confused. They couldn’t remember their stories. They couldn’t remember where they belonged. So the boy began telling tale after tale of how the constellations came to be, just as his mother had told him. He watched, awestruck, as the stars listened and began to shift back to their natural positions until every last one was in its place. He had finally received his wish, to see the stars up close, and they were far more breathtakingly beautiful than he could have imagined.

But he was ready to return home. He wanted to share with his mother what he had seen and done. As a thank-you for reminding them of their meaning, the stars helped the boy to return home. Sagittarius strung the boy in his bow, aimed him toward the observatory he came from, and released. He plummeted toward the ground, leaving a trail of light in his wake. A shooting star. The barmaid, seeing the bright orange streak of the boy’s fall, ran out to catch him.

“I’m so proud of you, my little bear,” the barmaid whispered as she held the boy in her arms.