The world shrieked as the wind tore across the hilltop, a mournful howl that flattened the grass and clawed at the skin. The boy knelt, heart a frantic drum in his chest. Sweat mingled with the damp, earthy scent of the ground and the musk of their shared exertion. His gaze, wide and luminous as the fading twilight, locked on the girl beside him. “Your eyes,” he whispered, his sultry voice a thread against the rising fury of the storm, “shine brighter and more beautiful than the north star itself.” Her cheeks flushed, but beneath the vibrant heat, a shiver ran through her, echoing the strange, electric unease that crackled through the very air.
Unbeknownst to them, in the high celestial court, those words ignited a storm. Polaris, the north star, a beacon of constancy, heard the comparison. For eons it had stood sentinel, never doubting its splendor. Now – to be deemed less beautiful than light in a girl’s eyes? The insult cut deep. Driven by a jealousy as old as the universe, Polaris flared with a rage that could turn galaxies to dust. It was time to prove its brilliance, to reclaim its throne of beauty.
Below, chaos bloomed like a monstrous flower. In villages, screams replaced gasps…and other, less dignified noises. Bowels were emptied, and the earth ran yellow with liquid fear. Animals stampeded, adding their panicked cries to the unnatural shriek of the wind as the sky blazed brighter. Fishermen clung to capsized boats, desperately trying to remember which way was up in a sea that mirrored the burning heavens. Astronomers wept, though whether from awe or the horrifying realization that all their charts were now useless was anyone’s guess.
Yet the boy and girl remained a world unto themselves. His eyes held the wonder of unexplored lands, and her touch became their map, fingers tracing the lines and curves of his body. Their whispers, barely audible over the growing din, wove a tapestry of shared dreams– a small boat, the call of the unknown, a world just for them at the edge of the horizon. And as Polaris, a blinding spear, plunged towards them, their hands found each other, their bond a defiant light against the descending darkness.
The impact was a blinding flash, followed by a rather pathetic rumble that shook the dust off distant rooftops. The hilltop, sadly, remained stubbornly intact, sporting only a slightly singed patch. Two young figures…well, the less said about their disincorporeal state, the better…turned into particularly fine ash. The landscape below spoke of remarkably localized devastation – a few disgruntled villagers peered out at missing thatch, a bewildered cow mooed at the smoldering grass, and out at sea, a few fish floated belly-up, more confused than injured.
Polaris, now slightly less bright, ego almost intact, crackled with a chilling victory cry: “Who’s bright and beautiful now!” But as it limped back to its lonely place, its own light seemed less magnificent, its brilliance tainted forever. The other stars, once comrades-in-arms, now shied away, their soft twinkling tinged with a new, wary coldness. Polaris had won its battle but at a terrible cost. It had proven its brilliance yet become a pariah, a star forever marked by petty rage and the echoes of laughter born from tragedy.
In the nights that followed, two new stars twinkled faintly above that scarred hill. They were small and unassuming, but they held a steady light that Polaris, for all its fury, could never dim. For true beauty shines from within, and no star, however mighty, can ever outshine the light of love.
The hill became a place of pilgrimage, where people came to marvel at the scar on the earth. They told the tale of the two innocents lost, and with wry smiles, pointed out the absurdity of a star that went to war against a simple compliment. On the hill, a carving and a reminder, passed down from generation to generation “Don’t twinkle in your lover’s eyes, the stars…they get awfully jealous.”
Does God Exist? 