Where the Stars End

by Ross Anthony

  Between countless sunfalls and sunrises, both of his parents had been taken away. I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for him, especially now, feeling like he was never loved or accepted. At least if he was, it had all been revoked the day he wound up in the hospital, fighting for me. His mother was relentless about who she wanted him to be.

  A son wants nothing more than a mother’s love, but he never got that. However, he did have a noble father, one who he could take great pride in remembering.

  “I know,” I agreed.

  “Will you just stay here with me, just for a moment?” he asked.

  I nodded in silent agreement. I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of every moment next to him. He made me forget about the world and all of its nightmares.

  I stepped over to the banister and leaned forward with my arms crossed, using them as a prop.

  I felt his peacefulness as I watched him peer out into the horizon.

  “I’m so grateful for you,” he said, still looking off into the distance.

  I blushed, but I was curious, as I hadn’t done anything. If anyone should’ve been spewing with gratitude, it should’ve been me. I several times over had been the damsel in distress. “Why?” I asked.

  He turned to me and brought his hand up to my face, gently running his thumb across my cheek. “Because you saved me.”

  I looked off at the sun as it rose over the hill and vanquished the shadows between us. I felt a sense of rebirth as the watercolors painting the dawning sky washed over me. Despite the months of challenges, this life was too beautiful to believe it wasn’t of Divine creation.

  I looked back at him and, almost mimicking his gesture, ran my thumb across the scar on his eyebrow and slid my hand down, caressing the side of his scruffy face. “We saved each other,” I said.

  “As eínai gia pánta,” he grinned softly, pulling me into him and keeping his eyes locked onto mine.

  A fire sparked in the hollows of my chest as I once again lost myself in his magnetic eyes.

  This time, hidden in his pools of glittering silver, I discovered the point in the horizon in which the light of the sun begins to break the darkness of the moon. The place where the stars end, and I begin.

  It was in that moment, as I said the words aloud to him, that I finally understood what my mother always meant: “You’re my sun, the moon, and the stars.”

  Epilogue

  After Hate’s fires ravaged the world, a gray blanket of ash settled over the old land. Life as it was had grown numb and dormant.

  Years went by before the ashes were whisked away by the winds of time.

  Resting underneath the gray dust waited a shiny new world, one in which people of all walks of life could revel in Love’s light.

  This is not to say that all shadows have been abolished, nor are they all evil. Balance requires chaos. Without it, the world would not know order.

  The greatest concern at this moment is rebuilding a prosperous, self-sufficient nation. That in itself demands the light and its shadows to work cohesively.

  This means, for now, the sound of peace rings throughout the New America, where we have since returned.

  We had lost nearly everything but ourselves. Together, we rose from the ashes reborn, ready to begin again.

  With that, it is only a matter of time before Fear strikes back and Hate ravages the land once more.

  We know this, because history is like a broken record player, playing the same song over and over again.

  But next time, we won’t be ignorant; we’ll be waiting.

  Understand, we will not just be survivors.

  We will be heroes.

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