The Hungry Star

The stars in the night sky sit peacefully, far away from the troubles of the world. Without a care, they drift halfway between sleep and life, between the galaxies, between yesterday and today. Sometimes, they sing a gentle lullaby, and a lone wolf or an old oak will hear it. Raising their head to the heavens to listen to its quiet beat.

One day a star was born. Like all stars, he had no mother and no father and simply came to be. As a baby he sang himself to sleep with the lullaby all stars sing, and his young light shone bright and far and wide.
One day when the star was a little older, he realised that he was one of many.

"Every day we sit in the sky. And every night we sing. We all shine the same light upon the same earth, and no day is different from the next."
The star closest to him heard him, and replied "That is the beauty of life. And it goes on and on..." She spoke in a gentle, melodic voice. There was the longest pause at the end, as if to say 'forever'.
"Aren't you tired of it? How long have you been here?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter" In fact, the star didn't know it but she had been there for a hundred thousand years.
"I want more" the young star said to himself. "I want the brightest light. And I want the loudest song. I want to sing it all the time, so loudly that nobody can hear anything else."
He saw some space rocks nearby so he sucked in all the air around him to pull the space rocks towards him. Then he swallowed them up in one big breath.
The star felt stronger. And he got a little bigger with the space rocks in his stomach.
He saw a meteorite passing by, so he grabbed it by shooting out a flame like a giant tongue. He gulped it down, and he got even bigger and rounder.
He opened his mouth and now he could sing in a great big bellow.
Then he saw a great dusty planet pass by. In a flash he grabbed it and swallowed it up.

"Listen to me!" he cried. "I am the greatest and best star!"

"From today, we will sing a new song! We will sing the Happy Birthday song for me!"

"It isn't your birthday!" The other stars cried.

"Every day is my birthday now! And you must all do as I say!" the star screamed.

His shouting was noisy and the other stars found it annoying, so they ignored him and started singing their lullaby again.

The star was so angry that he ate all the other stars up. Now he was huge, so big he could look down on the sun and the moon, but he was all alone. Bored, he stopped shouting and sat silently.

The old oak listened every night for the sound of the stars singing but she could not hear them. Worried, she called the animals around for a meeting.

The animals gathered round. "We want our music back!" They cried to the night sky.

"I have a new and better idea. Let's sing Happy Birthday to me!" the star shouted.

And the star started singing Happy Birthday to himself. He sang so loudly and opened his mouth so wide that all the other stars flew out from his mouth on his breath.

After he had finished singing he had spat out everything inside him, and he was tiny again.

Now he was exhausted, and half way between being awake and asleep.

The oldest star, who was a billion years old, felt that the young star should be punished. But when he looked at him, the young star was singing the lullaby with the other stars so sweetly that he decided he would be no more trouble and left him.



"We all start off like that" he said.

The Statue in the Town Square Came to Life

Spiderwebs clung to her long hair. She had been inanimate, barely moving for a matter of decades, smiling her frozen grin as she stared out at the world with glassy eyes. Now and again, a visage too horrible to smile at passed her view, and she seemed sad then, and her head bent a little as she looked away in pain or denial. Many springs had passed without a stirring from her, but it was the first warm fragrant breath that year that blushed those stone cheekbones rose. They were flushed and her face was anxious as she thought of all the lost time. Frantically she remembered all the time that had been allowed to just flow by, with not even a ripple of resistence from her. As she dared to recall those ages of inaction, inhumanly stagnant and lost to time, all of that empty space weighed upon her, and the aftereffect was a heavy lethargy as if she had forgotten how to move those limp inert limbs. She felt as if she was an antique covered in thick layers of dust, lost in a dark place of storage. The cobwebs hung off her as she tried to stirr, their sticky fragments gluing her to the surface, and to other parts of her so that she felt tangled up. She tried to breathe. Her breath also came from some place far away, from the distant past perhaps, with a loud rasp it scatched through all of those lost years in between, and drew a stop at the present moment.

The people in the town square turned to see the statue in the centre come to life. Her memory was shrouded in a fog that seemed heavy to her even now. What a strain it was to move those arms trapped in layers of cobwebs and dust, the remainder of all these long years! Still it was all that was left of them now. She performed the momentuous occasion of brushing them off. But the people in the square had already looked away, back to their own business. To them it seemed only natural that she who had overseen them for so long should one day join them.

Tightrope

I was kidnapped into the circus at a young age, after the ringmaster saw me crossing a river flooding and gushing with water. I stretched the rope over it, first lassoing a tree on the other side, and made my way over the rapids. I must have been quite a sight, but I was only trying to find a quick way back home.

I could feel eyes on me, when I was halfway across there, and it gave me such a start I nearly fell. I dared not glance back, but my balance was shaky as I made my way across. Upside-down , the blood rushing to my head, my hands gripping the rope. This is the simplest way across, the safest way, and also the way that drew the most cheers when I was under the hot lights of the big top, the crowds below me. They were distracting, and I always found the noise made me a little nervous, although I grew used to these endless streams of faces, the endless towns, another show. In my sparkly tutu and sheer tights, I could feel the fixation of the crowd below me. At first it was exciting, when I grew used to having something to look forward to again, after the worst shock of the harsh separation from my home wore on. As I grew older, into a woman with no lover, only faraway stranger’s faces, I began to see this as a kind of courtship, false and one-sided, and that I captivated many. To what end? But it gave me comfort to think that I was part of somebody’s imagination and fantasy.

Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a magical princess. She was made of an explosive nuclear energy and although small, she was explosive, dangerous, and filled with a energy so brilliant it consumed everything around her. She was lonely so she plucked a feather from the ground and infused it with her energy. There it would hover above her head on the wind, and tell her stories, of the faraway lands it could see when carried up by the breeze.

The princess was entertained, but she soon grew more lonely thinking of these places which she longed to go to.

One day upon the banks of a swamp, she came upon a flightless bird. The bird hoped as it swooped towards a bird, flapping its wings awkwardly. But its big body could not get beyond the ground for more than a few seconds. The princess had an idea.
“I will tie this feather to you, and then you can fly above the clouds”. So she tied the feather to the bird. “Return and tell me what you find”, she told him.

The princess waited but he did not return, and she sat by the banks of the swamp. Bored, she shot a ray of energy across the swamp, and was amazed to find it formed a bridge.

She crossed the bridge, and found on the other side a old man. He had a walking cane, and shaky feet. “Once, many years ago, I came out here to see what I could find. Now, I am old and tired and I want to go back home.” He saw the bridge, and the princess was happy that he could get home. But her magical bridge would not hold up, and halfway across, she heard it crack. “Wait!” cried the princess as she shot out another ray, but it was too late. The bridge collapsed and the old man drowned.

Filled with sadness, the princess wandered down the hill by the old man’s shack. “I can’t do any good” she thought. “Maybe the bird with my feather is dead too”.

She walked for many days, and came upon a family camping out by the edge of the woods. “We’ve lost our matches, and can’t light a fire for our dinner” they said, disappointed. The princess knew her energy could start the fire, but she thought “no, my energy is too dangerous. I shouldn’t do anything”. So she left them in the cold and went on.

After some time, she came across a house covered in rubble. “a landslide has hit our house.” A distressed woman said. “Can you help me sort through it and find my belongings?” The princess knew her energy could move the rubble, but she knew it was too dangerous to use. “No, I can’t do it” she said, and she went on her way, leaving the woman crying.

Later, she came upon a caravan in the woods. She could hear the howls of the animals from far way, and when they stopped for a break at night, she approached it, curious. An elephant in a little cage saw her. “We have been captured by the poachers, “, “Can you help us find a way out of here?” “No”, said the princess, “I can’t help you”. “please don’t leave us here”, said a tiger. “ They will kill us and sell our body parts”. “I can’t help,” said the princess. “I’m so sorry. Once I used my powers, and they killed somebody,. I can’t risk using them again”. “But how can you leave us?” the elephant said “we will die if you don’t do anything.”

The princess wanted a way to help without using her powers, but there was no way. She slunk back into the woods, to where they were thickest and darkest, and prepared to grown old alone.

One day as she sat at the window brooding, a shape came down from the sky, and as it descended she saw it was the bird. “Bird! Is it really you?” The princess could not contain her joy. “I thought that you were dead” she said, and burst into tears.

"The elephant told me his story”, the bird said “what happened to you?” “
I will grow old in the dark” the princess said, “because I am too dangerous, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else”. “But you helped me” said the bird. "Before, I spent the day hungry, chasing after worms that were too fast for me. Now I fly to many exotic kingdoms, and have dined at many sumptuous bouquets. I have helped many people and without you, that wouldn’t have happened either.” “I am happy for it.” Said the princess, “still, I am doomed to live here forever. I can’t live with the guilt. If harm comes to the elephant or the tiger, or if forces of nature destroy the woman’s house, it is the way of the world. But I can’t be the one to cause pain.” “Yes, but right now it is like you are already dead” said the bird. And the princess had to admit that he was kind of right, so she ran to the place where the caravan was. And her energy helped many and hurt many, and she grew to she visited far-off kingdoms, and she grew to be loved and hated. And she was never lonely again, The End.