Astra

From the skeleton of an old observatory buried in the Chilean desert, a man waited for the sky to finish swallowing the sun.

He had chosen this place carefully, like one might choose a final sentence. The building creaked with age, its metal ribs rusted and tired, its lenses outdated relics in an era where humanity had long since pierced deeper into the cosmos than he ever had. But none of that mattered to him. The stars had never been about distance.

They had always been about her.

The old astronomer steadied himself beside the telescope, fingers trembling against cold steel. His breath came shallow, uneven, as though each inhale had to negotiate with his body for permission.

“Sarra…” he whispered, voice thin as dust. “Did you find your place among them?”

“I have.”

The reply arrived like a memory spoken aloud.

He didn’t turn immediately. He knew better. Looking would ruin it. Looking always ruined it.

“Still cruel,” he murmured faintly, a ghost of a smile flickering across his face. “Even now, you make me chase your voice.”

“How long has it been?” she asked.

He let out a weak laugh that collapsed into a cough.

“Long enough for Janna to surpass us both,” he said. “She graduated top of her class. Brilliant. Driven. Just like you said she would be.”

“She needed you.”

“She needed you more.”

Silence, but not empty silence. The kind that presses gently against the ribs.

The old man sank to his knees, the strength slipping out of him like water through open fingers. His hands rose to his face, catching tears that seemed surprised to exist.

“I tried,” he whispered. “God, I tried.”

“I know.”

Something brushed his cheek. Not real. Not possible. But he leaned into it anyway, chasing the warmth like a starving man chasing scent.

“I remember your hands,” she said softly. “Always cold.”

“And yours,” he replied. “Always burning.”

For a moment, time folded.

For a moment, they were young again.

He woke on the observatory floor beside the telescope, the world stiff and distant. The warmth was gone. It always was.

“Sarra…”

Nothing.

He dragged himself across the floor, each movement deliberate, humiliating. In his office, the small room felt like a mausoleum for better days. On the desk sat a photograph: a young girl with black curls and sapphire eyes.

Janna.

He forced himself upright, unlocking the drawer with shaking hands. The medication box sat inside like an accusation.

He stared at it for a long time.

Then longer.

“Sarra…” he murmured again, almost pleading.

His fingers fumbled with the tablets, failing again and again, until frustration overtook him. The box slipped from his hands. Pills scattered like fallen stars across the floor.

He didn’t pick them up.

Instead, he turned back toward the telescope.

The sky had darkened. The horizon still smoldered faintly, but above it stretched a vast cathedral of stars.

He steadied himself against the instrument, peering through the lens.

“Do you remember?” he asked.

“I could never forget.”

He smiled, this time without effort.

“That night… my first time here. Just after Christmas. New moon. You were already part of this place.”

“And you were lost.”

“I still am.”

She laughed then, and the sound was sharper than any knife.

“It was here you fell in love,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied quietly. “But not with the stars.”

Something stood behind him. Not seen. Never seen. But felt. A presence that leaned close enough to blur the line between memory and hallucination.

He reached up, placing his hand over his own shoulder, as though covering hers.

Memory did not come as a stream.

It came as a flood.

Japan. A younger man lying beneath a sky so vast it felt like falling upward. The first time he realized how small he was. The first time he wanted to share that smallness with someone else.

Chile. Sarra. Her voice, her gaze, the way she spoke about stars as if they were neighbors.

“You don’t look at them,” she had said once. “You listen.”

He had listened.

But not to the stars.

To her.

Always to her.

The fracture came quietly.

It always does.

Her obsession deepened, spiraling inward, pulling her further from him. Conversations turned to monologues. Monologues turned to silence. Silence turned to absence.

He mistook distance for challenge.

He mistook indifference for mystery.

He mistook obsession for love.

New Zealand. A sky like shattered glass. She had never been happier.

“I love you,” she told him.

And for one night, he believed it.

Japan again. His turn to share something sacred.

She didn’t see it.

Didn’t feel it.

Didn’t try.

And something inside him cracked.

The rest was rot.

Desperation curdled into something uglier. Something he could never undo. A single night that split the world into before and after.

He told himself stories to survive it.

She stayed. That meant something.

It had to.

Then Janna was born.

And Sarra tried to leave.

The memory twisted sharply, jagged.

The observatory again.

A fall.

A scream.

Silence.

He had rehearsed the story a hundred times. An accident. A misstep. A tragedy.

Janna had listened.

She hadn’t argued.

But she had never forgiven.

The old man stood outside now, the observatory behind him, the desert stretching endlessly ahead. Dawn approached, slow and merciless. The stars began to fade, retreating into invisibility.

“Our sun is alone,” he said aloud. “An anomaly.”

No answer.

“Funny, isn’t it? Stars that seem close are separated by distances we can’t comprehend.”

Still nothing.

He swallowed, the words heavy.

“Do you think… we were ever close at all?”

The horizon brightened.

The stars vanished.

“Sarra…” he whispered one last time.

No voice came back.

Only the wind, dragging sand across the earth like the universe quietly erasing a footprint.

He closed his eyes.

“Is there a place for me out there?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

The cosmos did not respond.

It never had.