A budding galaxy…
“Give me your hand,” she demanded, after getting bored with her own. “Don’t worry — it’s not a Sharpie.” The wind chill whipped up a frozen frenzy of nastiness outside. The window rattled in its frame with a shotgun blast of sleet. Inside, however, it was warm, or at least as warm as the old house was going to get tonight. The heat pump hadn’t taken a break in three days or nights. The man pushed that concern away and looked down as his daughter doodled away on his hand. In the delta of meat between his thumb and pointer, she laid out a budding galaxy of thick-lined five point stars surrounding the outline of a crescent moon. All black and inky. He looked up at the side of her face as she concentrated on her artwork. She was a budding galaxy too. Twelve going on twenty. Her mass of unruly blonde curls and waves were partially covered by her oversized headphones. She hummed along with an indecipherable tune as she added dots to her new universe. “Those are distant stars and other galaxies,” she said, as if she could read his thoughts. Not so distant at all, he thought.
How it started…
Where it went…
How it ended…