She Breathes the Stars

Prologue

Tears, just like warmed breath, will crystalize at the touch of cold winter air. But while the fog of someone's breath may float off into the starry sky, tears will stay plastered to the corners of eyes and leave icy trails down one's cheeks.

Breath, like a passing loved one, will leave. Tears, like pain, will stay.

I never quite understood the analogy of cold breath vs. tears until my own delusional brain forced me to. The mind creates crazy things when one is in excruciating pain; things that someone without scars wouldn't understand until a wound in the heart was opened.

I was only eleven when it happened to me, and the emotional pain left me with a dream that could never be erased from memory.

Just like a regular dream, I couldn't feel anything. The edges of my vision were blurry and the only thing I could hear was the sound of my own heartbeat drumming in my ears. I was standing on a white balcony of a big house wearing the black dress that I wore to my parent's funeral. I was crying, and even though I couldn't feel anything, I knew my heart ached of loneliness.

That night, I learned that feeling lonely and being alone were two completely different things.

I guess that's the fact that compelled me to splay my fingers upwards towards the sky, hoping that my mother or father would fall from the havens to press their palm against mine.

But what I got was so much different.

Yes, everyone knows that warm breath crystalizes in cold air, but his breath was the exception for the rule. He appeared just inches before my hand, skin pale and eyes dark. His breath puffed out glimmering sequins between pursed lips, almost like he was breathing in the night sky, and I was instantly drawn to him.

"Who are you?" My breath fogged against my eyes, but his puffs of air were shimmering.

"The Night." The boy responded back easily, his voice distant and mysterious as if I were hearing him through a dark tunnel. "Do not be alarmed, I am only here to offer you a deal."

Even at eleven years old I knew the boy was beautiful. It was hard to pay attention to what he was saying when his skin was as light as the moon and his locks of black hair shined against his glittering breath. I knew I was dreaming, but that didn't stop me from listening to the boy even though he wasn't real.

"A deal?"

"Yes." He nodded, looking to the sky from which he came. "I only come to those whose existence in this world is too important to be erased. People who, if they were to die, would have a gigantic negative impact on humanity."

"I'm going to die?"

He didn't answer. But as he shoved his pale hands into hoodie pockets, a leaf overhead was snagged from its branch by the wind and fluttered down behind him. It graced along his neck and down his spine, but did not disappear. I watched it float all the way towards the stone ground, even though I shouldn't have been able to.

"I can see through you." I said after, and a side of his lips curved up in amusement.

"Of course you can; I am not real." His ghostly hand retracted from his pocket, pulling out a slim piece of blue paper along with it. He took it gently between two fingers and began to fold it, wrapped it around a few times, and then finally pushed against the edges carefully. Once he was done, he had placed a perfectly constructed paper star inside his palm. He held it out for me. "This is for you."

As I took the star, I expected my hand to touch his, but it didn't. My fingers phased right through his milky-white skin and the hairs on my arm stood on end with the chilled sensation it left behind.

"Jesus." I breathed.

"No, I'm The Night."

I raised my eyebrows at the mystical being before me and held tight to the paper I was given. He talked so old, but looked to be around my age. I held up the star in front of my face, almost accusingly.

"What is this for?"

"Make 9,999 more." He responded smoothly. "And I will come back to grant you a wish."

Most eleven year old girl's minds would have latched onto the words "grant you a wish," but mine went the opposite way and focused on the statement "I will come back." Not many people had offered me such a thing before, and after my parents left me, nothing sounded better than to have a friend come back to me.

So, as the boy dissipated right before my dreaming eyes, I knew I had to make the paper stars just to give myself some sense of false hope. Something to get me through the pain. Even if it was all a lie.

And, once again, what I got was something that I could've never expected