Hello everyone! I wrote this short story, but it's my first try and not quite up to the standard I want it to be. I'm pretty determined to improve it, though. So please, feel free to be as brutally honest as you can! Thanks!


The path before him lay flat, carpeting his tiny feet in its familiar welcome. It was the same beaten road he travelled each day, garbed in a school uniform too smart for his age and a backpack too large for his size.

The Boy trudged on in silence, noticing not the sparse word around him. He lived instead amongst entertainment he himself conjured up in his head. After all, how could the plain canvas before him hope to compete with the sheer appeal of his imagined worlds? He had looked at the path less and less with every day he took it, until he existed solely in a forest of leaking colours, a battlefield with the world’s greatest heroes, or even the classroom from which he had only just been dismissed.

Yet this day struck a difference. A gentle, rhythmic weeping had penetrated the stupor of his imagination. Immediately rose concern, pure and childlike, and he snapped himself within, dropping his contented smile. He lived once again in the world laid in front of him. Feet moving with the pace purpose beckoned them to, he deviated from his accustomed route and trailed with his ears.

Before long the Boy was greeted with the sight of a Woman. She sat, back against a tree and face shielded with her knees, as if to hide herself better from the world. An adult might here have stopped. Paused, to consider how best to approach this Woman. But the Boy lacked the experience to give thought precedence over action, thus he hurried to her at once.

“Excuse me, miss,” began the boy, with the endearingly innocent tone only young children may employ. “Are you alright?”

At this the Woman’s head lifted over the wall of her knees, and she gazed at the Boy with sightless eyes. Immediately the Boy was frozen, not by her blindness, but by the sheer wrongness of seeing tears mar so beautiful a face.

“No, child.” She said, her voice conveying an age greater than that of her face. “I am not.”

The Boy gathered himself and, now intensified in his desire to alleviate her grief, asked “What’s wrong?” When the Woman remained silent, he added “Someone as pretty as you shouldn’t cry, miss. It’s not right.”

This drew a sad smile from the Woman, and she banished her tears with a gentle flick of her fingers.

“Ah, yet what else am I to do, Boy? My children are dead.”

At this she began to lower herself once more into the shield of her knees, but the Boy would not have it. He was determined to take away her sadness.

“Please miss,” he said, her distraught leaking into his voice. “What happened?”

“Well child,” she answered sorrowfully. “You have murdered them.”

Panic surged through the Boy. How could he ever have done anything to upset so beautiful a person? He knew from his classes and learnings of the world that murder was a very bad thing to do. He had killed the odd tiny insect, yes, but surely that wasn’t the same thing as murder. Surely he had not murdered this Woman’s children, either.

He began to defend himself, to assure the woman that he had done no such thing. However, she waved a regal hand, stopping his speech.

“Let me tell you a story,” she began. “Once, in a time that has long since deceased were there two beings – your Sky and your Earth.

They lived in compliment. Earth was encircled by the garment of Sky. They lived in merriment. Stars, the children of Sky, and Life, the offspring of Earth, would gaze lovingly at one another, day and night (which at this passed time were the same).

Then one day cruel Sun came from far away, to disrupt this union. She shone selfishly into Sky, separating for ever more day from night.

The harsh light from Sun hurt the Stars, and no longer were they able to face the day. Sky hence begged the Sun frantically – ‘Please! Will you sheath your light, so that my children might once again see day?’

Yet Sun did not deem even to respond, engrossed solely in doing what interested her and her alone. She continued to illuminate Sky’s terrible pain.

Distraught, Sky turned to Earth, her companion of uncountable years. “Speak to Sun, dear friend!’ she pleaded. ‘Speak quickly, for look – my children – they die.’

And Earth responded in his rumble ‘Don’t fear, worrisome sky, for your children still have the night. They may frolic and be seen and glitter to their desire then. Do not ask me to stop dear sun, for her rays give me such pleasure and nurture my Life so.’

Thus it was that Sky had lost her only friend, as her children lived half-dead by Sun’s unyielding hand. This was a matter which time would not alleviate, but rather connive to worsen. Earth grew entranced by the fickle flames that lit the day, and sought to capture them to brighten the night as well.

‘Listen!’ shrieked Sky, aggrieved. ‘Put out your lights, or my Stars shall die’.

Yet Earth heeded her naught, and added torches and bulbs to dispel the night. And thus her Stars did die.

Do you see now, child? I am your Sky, that blankets your Earth. So what would you have me do but mourn?”

At this the boy perked from his previously engrossed state. A delighted smile came to his face as he felt he could dissolve her woe.

“Don’t worry, miss!” he said excited and happy. “Your children aren’t dead. The Stars are a fairytale – they aren’t real and never existed!”