Sunsets and Stars

The sun shattered across the sky in a myriad of pink and gold, sinking slowly across the sea. Tara sat eyes closed, feeling the warmth of the breeze and fading light above. For once the wind was not blowing her fringe into her face, and she let a smile grace her lips softly. The grass rustled beside her.

"You'll miss it," a voice said.

The smile widened. "No I won't. Dusk is just as nice anyway. I'll catch that."

"Catch it and what, bottle it, and carry it everywhere?"

She nudged the speaker playfully in reply, letting one eye peep from a corner. "No, I think that's for you to do." They shared a moment of laughter between them. She flopped on the ground, clasping her hands behind her head, still chuckling. "Sky's pretty clear tonight isn't it?" she mused, scanning the pale blue appearing up ahead with darkening tinges around the edges.

"Yeah, remember the time we had to catch that bus and it was pouring like anything?"

How could she forget? Yet she had, images buzzed by without meaning like the cars whose tyres had flung waves of wet at them as they bowled past puddles. She remembered laughing inside, breaths shaky from the thrill of running. Running, that brought about fuzzy stills of tumbling through a field, grabbing hold of the edge of a t-shirt only to have both crashing to the ground a moment later. Laughter, so much laughter, tinkling like wind chimes through the air. Maybe the lack of clarity made it easier to look at again, she thought. Or experience again.

Speaking of which, "I'd always wanted to lie under the stars at the beach you know," Tara murmured into the wind. It carried to her friend's ears nonetheless, and the shuffling beside her told her that she too was lying down. Silence followed for a minute, two. All that could be heard now was their breathing and the occasional sonorous call of a far off ship. She closed her eyes again, and the ground became a bed she had curled up on after an exhausting day that had found her at Amber's place. All the times she’d woken up after a nap to the sound of her typing or flipping through one of her books in the winding afternoon, the peace she’d felt was much like how she felt now.

It was such a strange association. They were opposites after all. One was a fiery go getter, the other a dreamer. Tara though generally well liked and cheerful, slid under the radar of most in school while Amber was always the one cracking jokes in class and rallying the school at various mass participation events. Amber was always the one moving forward, always displaying verve and determination, in the courts or in class. Team Captain, Class Representative, Medal winner, Ace student, and the list went on. Perhaps it was the fact that Amber brought the best smiles out of Tara while she could calm her down the best in turn. Perhaps it was the fact that they just kept bumping into each other during breaks. Whatever it was they regularly found themselves in each other’s company.

“There was a teddy bear who had no heart. He had one once, he was sure, but he must have lost it somewhere, or someone must’ve stolen it. He was an old bear, with ears all ragged and stuffing poking out through the seams of his front paws. Usually he'd be found at the window of house number three, and the birds would take turns trying to get him to come out from the other side. The bear wasn't interested in the garden outside. He spent more time trying to listen for his heart than the beating of wings. Once he thought he heard it, but it wasn't anywhere inside him, and yet it was. A faint echo of a thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, knocking about in his head. It sounded so far away though, or like it was underwater. So the bear pondered where his heart could be, and one day decided to go look for it.”

“Then what happens?” Amber asked.

“I don’t know. I’m stuck. It sounds kind of lame anyway. I think I’ll scrap it.” Tara was tucked in a corner of the bedroom, sprawled on her back and squinting at the piece of paper in her hand.

“Don’t. Never know when it might be useful.”

“Hmm…” Tara pursed her lips at the paragraph.

“Where’s your heart?”

Tara had smiled then and turned to the window, the ‘not here’ barely formed on her lips. Amber spun around in her chair, aiming a ball at the wall on the other side of the room, catching it deftly as it bounced back with a grim smile. “Thought so.”

"I don't suppose the earth could tie someone like you down," she'd told Tara another time. They were at the nearby park taking advantage of the good weather.

"Really?” The swing had jerked slightly then as Tara turned up to look at Amber who was standing on the seat.

“Yeah, it’s in your name after all right?”

“Well what about yours?”

“I’m a traffic light Tara, not very glamorous.” They’d laughed and Tara never got the chance to ask Amber to elaborate.

A family cycled past on the pathway a few metres off. Dusk was all around now. A dog barked in the distance and a gust of wind shook the trees around them. Tara pulled a blanket around them both as Amber trembled slightly. Tara had once found Amber shivering in a state after a particularly bad quarrel with the parents. They had sat on a bench at a bus stop for most of the night, and even after Amber had given in to sleep Tara kept watch, looking at the rows of orange street light spots.


Now they huddled closer together, and Tara heard a voice whisper in her ear, "What'll happen to us?"

"We'll keep going. You'll go on. You always do."

"And you?"

"There'll still be sunsets for me."

"But where will the sunset be?"

"It's not a where, but when that matters. After all, I'll still have the colours. All the Red, the Orange, the Yellow. The Amber."

Pause.

"And what will I have?"

"You'll have the stars."

-S(2009)