I've spent my entire life trying to touch the universe. 

When I was younger, I thought it was with me in every breath, a simple energy guiding me forward, in and out, in and out. I would play with it, caught up in its imagined grandeur, in its everyday wonder. A playground made all the difference to my beleaguered soul, and I delighted in the possibilities a swing-set could carry. Now, I swing only for nostalgia and nausea. 

Later, I thought I found the universe, leaning halfway out a hotel window and staring at the stars, my feet hooked underneath the bed frame so I wouldn't fall out - even though my entire body lay outside the window, simply enthralled by what she saw above her. It's different in country-towns, you can actually see the stars. Seeing the stars makes one think they can touch them, can reach out and snag the stardust straight from the moon itself. 

Yet since my hands only snatched at empty air, no matter how many times I sought something more, I turned to stories and books, hoping to capture the majesty of the universe with a scarce word, delicate and drifting across the page. It glimmered in the world around me, and here at last was stardust, beautiful and gentle in my hands. Even then, though, I didn't touch the truth of the universe, only its reflection - like a sunset over the water, or a lonely girl staring into a backlit mirror in a hotel bathroom.

Hotels became a theme, a longing. A place of uncertainty where maybe this time... maybe this time it'd work. But it never did. I got closer, then further and further away. No matter how tall I grew, how high I climbed, I couldn't reach it. 

Sitting in the back of a research class, our professor told us a complete population was called a universe. You could have as many universes as you wanted: women in their 60s, teenage men, cadavers, up to the entirety of Earth's population all at once. A universe, she said. I wondered, caught by the idea that here around me, everywhere, were mini universes, revolving around themselves, tumbling back again and again towards a common theme - a sun at the center of their galaxies, black holes and white holes the gravitational forces leading the way. 

Yet, it wasn't quite enough to see the world like this. To realize I could create my own universes, however great and small. Research confined the universe to the Earthly, to the immediately tangible, ignoring the existence of the millions of clusters of magic beyond our atmospheric walls. 

I've been told numerous times I don't live in a vacuum, that I need to be careful because my actions have consequences. But it screams around us daily, that massive lack of mass we call outer space, tearing into every breath. It meets us each evening, a reminder of how we pale in significance beside it. Yes, our follies touch each other, reverberating outwards through our cities and counties and states and countries and into the entirety of our planet, but at least they can't touch the universe.

We do live in a vacuum. 

Though I've spent my entire life searching for it, I'm not special. I can't touch it either. It will keep taunting and evading me, pulling further away with every fleeting touch, watching my hands glance off it and cackling its beautiful, beautiful laugh.  

Why must I chase you so? Why must you run away like this?

Some people like to think of God this way, I think. As untouchable, a vacuum far and away from us all. Cold and distant and running away as soon as we seek Him out. But I see God in the little beauties, the way the wind blows against my skin or the intricacy of a weed in the pasture. Wild blackberries in back alleyways, roses growing out of concrete. 

Perhaps God put us in a vacuum for a reason, a reason besides "well, at least they'll only blow themselves up." Perhaps if we could touch it, we'd become so caught up in the creation, we would entirely forget its Creator. 

Instead, maybe it points towards another kind of otherworldly beauty, showing us what's waiting on the other side - that there is more to this world than the cold vastness of a calculating universe constantly evading our touch.

Author's Note: I diverged away from my usual style a bit, but I tried writing this story five other ways, and this is how it came out! XD I know it's a bit random, but please let me know what you think. Star stories are my favorites. :)

"New Year's Night"

By Asche Keegan

There’s in the night a lonely child

Staring at a midnight sky. And with

Hands outstretched he catches Jupiter.

He’s just a solitary soul making the light 

Last forever in the palm of his hand, 

But it shines through all the dreams he holds.

On a shooting star, he makes a wish,

For a friend to spend next New Year with. 

He closes his eyes and breathes in deep,

Opens his hands, lets Jupiter escape.

When he looks up, there it shines again

Almost a star in the blackness of night

A lonely light in all that dark,

But a light nonetheless.

Because now he’s held a planet, 

Next will come the moon

But not to use up all his wishes, 

He will wait until the morrow’s eve.

What I Regret

By Asche Keegan

“What’s this?” the dragon asked, tucking his wings around me. “What feeling is that?”

I stretched back against his green scales, then turned and met his ichor eyes. “You wouldn’t know it,” I shrugged. “Ever heard of regret?”

Gregarious frowned—I could tell from the way his mouth tightened and his eyes slanted. “Why would you of all people be feeling regret? What are you feeling guilty for?”

I hesitated, looking out towards the mouth of the cave we were huddled in. The formless sky never changed, but for a moment I thought I saw a shooting star darting across its exterior. Distracted by the motion, I detached myself from Gregarious’ side and walked out onto the top of the mountain, looking for the sign in the sky.

I almost tripped, an action which would have sent me plummeting thousands of miles to the ground below. Gregarious had taught me how to influence matter in this world of mine, but I still did not relish the idea of falling. Besides, the only way to reach Gregarious’ cave was to fly.

“Are you regretting leaving your friend again?” Gregarious called out to me, attempting to redirect the conversation.

I shook my head. “That hurt, but looking back, it needed to happen. We’ve both needed to grow and mature a little. Learn what’s really important—that kind of thing. We’ll be trying again after next semester though, I think. I’m regretting the rest of it.”

“Why would you do that? Remember how she hurt you?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the star, trailing above me in its full magnificence. It felt out of place in this otherwise desolate world, kind of like myself. “‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend,’” I quoted. “That’s the last thing she sent me, but there’s more to the passage. Just a little further down in Proverbs, it says, ‘Do not forsake your friend.’”

“Why are you telling me this?” Gregarious asked.

“Oh, I thought you had asked.” I paused, one foot in front of the other, arms outstretched to keep my balance. “I hurt her too. And then nothing went well because of it. I’m regretting the stubbornness, the unwillingness to fight for what I needed to.”

“But you’re a fighter,” Gregarious said.

“I pretend I am,” I replied, turning back to him. “But I give up too easily, especially on the important stuff. That’s a lesson I’ve learned. You know, Proverbs isn’t the only passage I’ve been studying. 1 Corinthians 13 shares some important insights as well.”

“Have I not taught you what love is?” Gregarious asked. “Remember, it’s painful. It hurts everyone it touches, and then people abuse it. You get hurt, you give up everything for people who would never do the same. You pour your heart and soul into making something succeed, only for another to sabotage it.”

“You’ve always been a pessimist, Gregarious,” I replied. The star was trailing off now, stretching out over the desert and growing fainter. “That’s not what love is. It doesn’t envy or boast. It does not get angry, especially over nothing. Love is patient, kind, humble, forgiving, truthful, polite, and selfless. It protects, it trusts, it hopes, and it perseveres. By that standard, I’ve never loved anyone—not even myself.”

“So that’s it?” Gregarious asked. “You’re just going to go back to her just like that?”

I wobbled on the cliff edge, staring at the drop once more. “I’m not ready yet, but I’m getting there.” I wondered how much energy it would take to make a cloud to catch me if I leaped. “I’m learning how to love, and once I do, she and I can be unstoppable together again. Because sometimes—” I trailed off, running towards the edge of the cliff, even as Gregarious’ nostrils flared, and he shouted at me to stop.

“You just have to take a leap in the right direction,” I finished. Winking at him, I dived off the side of the cliff, simultaneously loving and despising this feeling of falling. Just in time, I summoned all my energy together into a wind tunnel that caught me before I hit the ground.

Adrenaline rushing through me, I looked back up to see how far I had fallen. Only a silhouette in the night, Gregarious lazily spiraled downward. “And maybe someday, I’ll teach you how to love as well,” I murmured to the dragon, before grinning and chasing the shooting star across the desert sands.

Holding On

 By Asche Keegan

I stood on the roof and cried, tiny pinpricks of light filling my vision with their brilliance. The cosmos stretched above me, tall and brilliant, and I was so close to reaching it. I sneaked over to the ledge, glancing out over the entire surroundings and the nearby highway. One A.M. traffic was scarce, and as the last vehicle rounded the bend in the road, I breathed a deep breath in and let it out.

I was alone, with only God standing between me and the rest of the universe. My thoughts scattered in a myriad of directions, always coming back to reach the same emotion of wonder and awe.

Nearby, the Toyota American flag rippled wildly in the wind, the cool breeze stretching it beyond my own imaginings. How my fingers itched for a chance to catalog the momentous glory of the universe. I lifted my cell phone, always present, to the sky, pulling up the camera app with a single click. When I finally took the picture, the glory of the stars became a single brightened pixel in a sea of black. The dark wisps of clouds that drifted across the atmosphere were lost to poor optics, and I grunted in disapproval and disappointment. I hesitated for a moment, and reluctant to leave my hotel ceiling perch, a new idea came to me.

Four minutes later, I was back on the roof, a camera dangling from the strap around my neck. I lifted the device to the sky, allowing the camera to filter to the right lighting setting to capture the brilliance I saw before me. Yet, when I scrolled through the pictures, although significantly improved from the phone, they still did not stand a chance of capturing the brilliance I saw before me.

I paused, glancing between the camera roll and the sky above me. Another car zoomed its way across the highway, and I jumped, as if startled. I tried a couple of different shots, but the outlook was already the same. Eventually, I gave up, setting the camera aside, unsure of whether to be disappointed by my inability to photograph the sky, or disgusted that the thing that was so beautiful to me would not be beautiful to others.

I turned my attention back to the universe, the reason I had climbed the last bit from the fourth floor to the roof. I was not the first to come this far, as evidenced by the beer cans and other paraphernalia. But no one had been here in a long time either.

Wind rippled through my hair, and I sighed, breathing a deep breath in and out. The moon climbed high above my head, and the occasional pair of headlights split the darkness. Crickets chirped somewhere in the distance, and I realized in that moment, that I had tried to describe a myriad of emotions and sense in just a single picture. Of course it wouldn’t be as good.

I smiled, and the awe of minutes before returned, surprising me with its power. Who was I to seek to capture something like this?

Thus 1 am turned to 2 am, and soon I slipped back down to the fourth floor hotel room, confident I had paid my respects to the new day.

Author's Note: This story is a bit different than what I normally write, but I felt inspired with the approaching Valentine's Day to write a story about a different kind of love. Enjoy, and please leave a comment below if you liked it! 

When I was a child, my father told me the story of how the Sun and the Moon began. He told me, enraptured as I was with wondering eyes, that the Sun was a star, born from another star, which was born from another, which was made by God.

He told me the Moon was a rock, only a piece of an asteroid, which had broken away from another asteroid, which had been made by God. I interrupted him to ask why God had not just made the Sun and the Moon in the first place, and he shushed me.

"Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?" he would say.

So I quieted down in my blankets, pulling them up to my chin, and I listened as my father's deep voice carried me to other worlds beyond our own.

Once upon a time, the Moon was the most powerful force in the universe, he told me. The Moon had the power to span the galaxies with heat and fire, burning anything in its path. Of all the superpowers, the Moon had the best, and he used it to both help and hurt others.

I asked my father why the moon had superpowers, and he just gave me a look until I closed my mouth and eyes again.

Now, the Sun, it was just a small Star, floating in the depths of space, lonely and dark. The Star watched the Moon in quiet admiration, and the Star told himself that someday he would be just like the Moon. So days passed, and the Star tried to glow as brightly as the Moon, but he could not even muster a slight light around himself.

"You see," my father said to me. "Nobody had told the Star that he and the Moon were different, and that rocks and stars were not the same."

The Star could not glow, and so one day, he finally gave up, casting away to the other side of the Earth so that the Moon could not see him try and fail again.

The Star thought that the Moon would be cruel to him, and mock him for not being able to light up, so he closed his eyes and cried himself to sleep.

I told my daddy that he was wrong, and stories did not work like that. The Sun had to light up!

"Well, if you think that is all there is to the story, then you are probably right," my father retorted, standing to leave.

I begged him not to leave, and to return and finish the story. I promised him I would not make any more interruptions, and he finally came back by my bed to tell the rest of the story. I had been seriously worried, at least until I saw the smile dancing in his eyes.

"Where were we, ah yes, the Star was crying itself to sleep," my father winked.

Little did the Star know, but the Moon had been watching him from far away. The Moon loved all the sky very much, but above all others he loved the Star. So, the Moon gave the Star the greatest gift he could give. He shared all of his power with the Star.

As the Moon drew closer to the Earth to share what he had with the Sun, he got caught into the orbit around the planet by accident. He was still able to see the Star wake up though, and when he did, the Star began to glow brightly.

The people down below on Earth marveled about the golden Star in the sky, but the Star was given a new name. He was now called the Sun.

And the Sun turned to the Moon, who had given him a new life, and the Sun noticed that the Moon was a lot weaker than he had been before. Now, the Moon could barely warm any planets at all, and the responsibility had fallen on the Sun.

And so the Moon gave up his power to help the Sun, and they loved each other the rest of their days, working together to help the people on Earth. The Sun was the light by day, and the Moon their guide by night.

"And that," my father finished, "was how the Sun and the Moon came to be."

I clapped in delight, and I told my daddy that he should be an author because he was great at telling stories. My father laughed, rustled my hair and pulled the blankets up further across my chest.

"Get some sleep, my son," my father smiled.

He was half-way across the room when I called him back to ask him why the Moon would give up his life to help the Sun.

My father looked at me for a moment and laughed, saying, "You'll understand when you're older."

And with that, he turned off the light and closed the door, allowing the glow of the moon to fill my bedroom.