F L A S H F I C T I O N
Kashfia Hassan
I squinted my eyes, trying to see past the tufts of white fluff. I leaned to the left and right, desperately trying to see past them, but in vain. Although in constant movement, the clouds were quick to replace each other, making it impossible to see past them.
“Ugghhhhhh!” I grumbled and threw a bunch of dust at them, “I HATE clouds!”
“Lyra, what are you doing?” Stella grumbled, barely able to open her eyes, “Go to sleep, it’s still midday!”
“Noo! I wanna see what everyone’s up to today!” I whined, “I’m sure they’re having a lot of fun!”
“Well, if you’re going to spend your day gawking at those humans again, go ahead,” Stella rolled her eyes, “But please, keep it down so the rest of us can sleep in peace.” In seconds, she was lost to the world.
Figures. Sometimes, I feel so alone up here, none of my sisters understand me or my interest in humans. They are so cute and little, and the earth looks so gorgeous from here! Their lives are filled with excitement, adventure, and new possibilities every day. What do we stars have? Sitting in the same spot night after night, surrounded by a thousand other stars, glittering and shimmering so bright, we can barely look at each other without being blinded. As soon as morning rolls around, they all rush to sleep — those tedious sleepyheads. No adventure, no excitement. Glued to the same spot my entire life, I have no choice but to live vicariously through humans.
Naturally, on cloudy days, I feel a little down. If it has been cloudy the past few days as well, I feel more than a little down. I feel miserable. Feeling dismal and lonely, I do the only thing I can, whenever something like this happens — I cry. I hate crying. My tears are huge, and they cause some serious discomfort for people down on Earth. Whenever I cry, they get out these half-circle instruments to protect themselves from my tears. As if that wasn’t flattering enough, some of them even stay inside and refuse to come out until I’ve stopped crying. Geez.
However, one good thing always happens after my crying sessions. Those pesky clouds disappear! By the time my tears are dry, the clouds have cleared and it is night-time. One by one, my sisters wake, and seeing my red-rimmed eyes, they take pity on me. So they do what they always do to cheer me up — they sing. They have the most melodic and enchanting voices ever — their singing never fails to make me smile. To tell the truth, there’s more than one reason for my smile. Whenever stars sing, they tend to sparkle more brightly than usual, and whenever we sparkle extra bright against the night sky, we see those little humans craning their necks and looking up — at us! If looking down at them makes me happy, you can imagine how ecstatic it makes me to see those little cuties looking back at me. It makes everything worthwhile.
What was that saying again? Oh, yeah — Every cloud has a silver lining.
Kashfia Hassan loves to write professionally and for fun.