Once upon a time,
...I was a star. I was a star with a perfect view of the Earth, though I was so young and so small and so far away that the Earth’s astronomers could not see me. My light was too new to have reached Earth yet and too tiny to be seen even if it had. Because of all this, I have never had a human name, not when I was a star anyway. I had only the name given to me by the Universe.
Sha-ii.
However you feel like pronouncing that is fine. I have never heard it spoken aloud, so even I am not sure how to say it correctly.
Many truths of the Universe are like that.
The place I call home, what humans refer to as outer space, is vast, cold, quiet, and terribly lonely for a small star such as myself.
The loneliness was all the more poignant because of my perfect view of Earth, of humanity.
It is the duty of all stars to twinkle and be silent, to accept our nature, our paths as fixed points in an ever-expanding Universe. It was my path to move parallel to you, to Earth, to be still, small, and never seen, never noticed and never loved. Oh, how envious I was of the brighter, larger stars you still use to navigate down here. For you see, almost as soon as I saw humans, I fell desperately in love with them. With you.
The little blue and green planet I saw whirling so quickly around its own star, nothing more than a strange, mathematical anomaly in the blackness, seemed to me to radiate with endless, boundless, infinite love.
So I loved it back.
It’s a little-known fact on Earth, only your poets seem to be truly aware of it, but we stars can weep. We are not supposed to do it, but I wept. I wept so long and so loudly that Gravity, one of the forces which governs the Universe, took notice.
Gravity came to me and said, “Little star, you must cease your crying. You are meant to be silent. Please, console yourself.”
I said, “I am sorry, Gravity, I cannot. I have tried, but I see so much beauty and love there, on that small planet. It spins so rapidly and I am so far from it that I know I will never have the chance to show my love for all the creatures on it, especially the humans.”
Gravity frowned. “It is true that a love unexpressed is one of the greatest pains of the Universe. You desire only to share your love with the inhabitants of that strange place?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Yes, it is my dearest wish!”
“Very well,” Gravity said. “Then I shall cause you to fall and there, in that strange place, you will land. You will be embodied as a human, but your soul will still be that of a star, for I cannot change your essence. If it is your love you wish to show them, then you will be able to do so, but those beings on that planet are different from you and I doubt they will ever understand or accept you.”
“You must be wrong, Gravity! They have so much love and I am so lonely here. Please, if you can send me there, do it now.”
“Do you wish it?”
“Yes! I wish to go to Earth.”
“It is a truth of the Universe, little star, that you must be careful what you wish for. But you have said the words and they cannot be unsaid. Therefore, your wish is granted. I hope that some day you realize what a mistake you have made.”
With a great shove from Gravity, I fell to the Earth.
And it is here, with a star’s soul in a human body, that I wish to tell you my story.
