Lillian and the Stars

you are the sun, the moon and stars (intro)

This happened 5 years ago, but I remember it too clearly.

For it haunts me at night and keeps me awake for the remainder of the day. I pray that one evening I'll drift off to sleep and I'll return but either way I relive everything, every second as if it was imprinted in my brain, it's a tattoo on my face, a bruise covering my arm.

Lillian.

It's 2:34 am and I'm barely deciding to get some shut eye. It'd be the third time this week I've stayed awake until 3 am. Usually sleep is my best-friend but the summer heat has made my sheets intolerable and so I find joy sitting under the ceiling fan in the dining room. Today, it

was a whopping 107 degrees. Either way I made my way to bed. I turned off the lights, closed my laptop and set it on my nightstand. It wasn't until I closed my eyes that things changed; that's when my life shifted and the stars just became brighter.

A voice had awakened me, "Dhara! Where are you!?" shouted a muffled voice. The voice was femanine but nothing like my mothers, who was the only one I lived with. The voice came closer, " I know you need your beauty sleep but this is just overdoing it" said the woman as she walked into my room with a comforting white smile. I sat up in my bed speechless as she walked over to me and grabbed my hand, lifting me to my feet in an instant. I don't know what was happening but it felt so natural. I felt like I knew her, and she knew me. I was dreaming and that's the only rational explanation, it was all just another lucid dream although it's been years since I've had one. My train of thought was broken as I heard the woman walk out the room leaving me with the words, "get ready we're going out". But to where? This wasn't my house, nor did I recognize anything about it other than pictures on the brown desk on the opposing side of the room. It was a picture of the woman and I, marked Lillian and Dhara 1/18/20 which is 10 years and 5 months from today. "Lillian, that must be her name", I thought to myself. She's beautiful. Lillian was a medium height, around 5"4 carrying short ruffled dirty blonde hair and pastel nude lips, her most notable trait was her pair of crystal blue eyes that resembled the ocean in every way. After a while of thinking, I finally got up and took a real look around. The only thing other than the white sheets and the matching pillow cases was a single smartphone sitting alongside the pillows, the phone was similar to the one I had at home but much larger and blank. I powered the phone on and saw that the lock screen was the same image of Lillian and I, and the time had read "10 pm". I rested the phone on the bed and headed towards the sliding closet to find anything to wear. At first glance there was not a thing I would ever wear, the most suitable being a tee shirt and a pair of black jeans topped with some vans that I did in fact own. Lillian popped back into the room and announced we were leaving. Upon opening the front door the moonlight had hit me like a bus, it was bright and flawless and lit the way to what I figured was Lillian's car. I got in the front seat and asked, "where are we headed?" she answered almost immediately, "the park". It was almost 11 pm but as she said, we pulled into the park parking lot. We both left the car and began to follow the cement path that went throughout the park, it was the same park that my friends and I go to weekly but instead of being flooded with children as usual, it was silent and empty. "What are we gonna do?" I asked, "the same thing as usual" she answered. We stopped at a random hill of grass and sat on the ground. "The moon is nice today" she sighed, I laid my head back on the grass and used my hands as pillows, "in comparison to what?" I asked. She didn't answer but instead asked, "why are you leaving?" "I'm not going anywhere" I chuckled. She turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, "You can't keep avoiding this, I love you and I don't want you to go so please just tell me why". I didn't know what to say; Where was I going? She hugged me with tears in her eyes and gripped on my shirt and that told me she meant what she was saying. I have no clue who this girl is or what she's talking about but I still felt bad for hurting her. "I'm not going anywhere." I said as I hugged her back, knowing that I was lying. "So you're gonna do it?" she said in excitement. "Do what?" I questioned. "Run away", she smiled. I got too caught up in the moment and said, "anything with you." She grabbed my arm and ran to the car, proceeding to get in and start the car. She flipped on the radio and played a CD that I immediately recognized as my favorite by the first track, Creep by Radiohead. How did I manage to keep this? Lillian began driving but not in the same direction as the house was, we had been scream-sing every song on cd so I didn't notice until around 20 minutes with no stop. "Where are we headed?" I asked, "Anywhere or nowhere, it's up to you" she replied as she used her free hand to grab mine. We continued singing the songs until all the tracks had finished and our voices were sore. After two hours on the highway and 2 separate cds being played, we arrived at a motel to sleep. The motel was a low quality but still manageable. I stepped into the bathroom to shower and thought about how wonderful it was, I thought about how much I never wanted to wake up but most of all, how much it felt like it was real. Every touch and emotion felt real. I walked out of the bathroom after the 20 minute cold showers and searched for Lillian, she was nowhere in sight. "Lillian?" I said in pure panic, "LILLIAN?!" she was nowhere. I looked outside the window and the car was gone. The only thing that was left was a note on the nightstand that read, "you are the sun, the moon and stars. just don't leave." I remember mourning the loss of the girl I just met, and then from there it was a blur. I woke up at home.