Looming darkness: what if the stars disappeared?

If stars only appear once a millennium, what would happen?

Imagine the lull of a weekday’s evening routine, the gap between dinner and bedtime. The dishes are done, but it’s too early for bed. The little family, parents and child, unwind in front of the fireplace, television turned on.

Mom and dad are scrolling their phones.

Suddenly, an announcement appears on the screens in their hands.

The stars have disappeared!

The parents blink and stare. A flurry of tapping begins, thumbs and fingers flying across the tiny screens.

What does it mean, the stars have disappeared?

An ardent search begins to verify this peculiar statement, but the message prevails.

The stars are gone! Darkness looms!

Still engrossed with their screens, the parents keep scrolling.

Is it a fluke? A prank? Another meaningless meme?

Dad glances at the TV. Should he switch the channel to CNN? Surf the other news networks, to check things out, to be informed?

But they stick with their phones, texting with friends.

“Did you get it too?” they ask each other. “What does it mean?”

Nobody checks on the child.

The child, a little girl of about six, sits on the floor with a series of wooden blocks. She is not alone, her rust-coloured mutt is nearby, chin on paws, slumbering with one eye open.

The girl is building a tower, tall with thick walls and spaces for windows. Her doll, the one with the long, blond hair, is perched on top of the tower.

Goldilocks.

She stares at her doll, then squints and ponders. She’s devising a plan for her doll to escape the tower.

Maybe if the hair is braided, she could use it like rope.

But something interrupts her imaginary play. The energy has shifted in the room with the fireplace. She looks at her parents but they’re still obsessed with their phones.

Except, they are no longer passively slumped against the pillows. They seem different. Animated.

Agitated.

“What's wrong, daddy?” the little girls asks with concern in her voice.

“Nothing, sweetie,” he responds. “There's just a weird message about the stars disappearing.”

The little girl casts a glance at the adjacent window, but the curtains are drawn. She gets up, walks toward the patio door at the other end of the room and peers out at the pitch dark night.

Her trusty companion, the rust-coloured mutt, opens his eyes. He felt it too, the shift in energy. He lifts his head and perks his ears.

The tiniest human, the most vulnerable in this house, is on the move.

He watches her walk away, high on alert, tense with anticipation.

Where is she going? What is she saying?

“No stars,” the little girl mutters quietly to herself, time and again. “The stars disappeared.”

When the girl arrives at the patio doors, she unlocks the latch and steps outside.

The mutt can’t allow her to leave the house alone, at night, in the dark. He patters toward the door, never taking his eyes off the girl. He steps across the threshold and sits beside the girl, love in his eyes, gazing and wondering.

What is she looking at?

The girl remains mesmerized and still, eyes cast upward, staring at the heavens.

Suddenly, a voice calls from inside the warm room.

“Honey, shut the door, it's cold!”

The voice belongs to mom. She’s always cold, the little girl knows, but she ignores the voice and remains frozen in place, just beyond the patio doors.

The little girl and her trusty companion, the rust-coloured mutt, keep looking up.

There is something wrong with the sky. There are no stars.

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Graphic art designed by ©Claudette Labriola. Stock images provided by Pexels.com

Image of dog by Nina Quka, Image of girl by Tetyana Koyyrina