The Comet

Mother was leaving again, as she always did when the lights in the house were switched off early. It meant that Mother and Father weren’t talking and that the child was awake in her bed when she heard the soft creak of the floorboards beneath Mother’s feet. As her bedroom door was eased open, she stepped toward her, leaning down to whisper a soft goodbye. The child lay still, her eyes remaining closed. 

Mother had left three times before she learned to stay awake, to fill the hours waiting for her inevitable goodbye with the plastic stars scattered across her ceiling. She’d watch them until their shapes blurred and stretched, distant figures swirling into a silent dance made for her tired eyes alone. Sometimes she longed to pull them down, loosen their hold on the ceiling so she could watch them from the palm of her hand. They swayed to the rhythm of her thoughts, a constant hum of Mother always returned. Even if she never said it outright.

And yet, tonight, even the stars seemed to hesitate in their dance as Mother turned for the door. What if tonight was different? What if something had changed? What if the night cloaked Mother in its sleeves so thickly she forgot which way was home? 

Perhaps that’s why, as the stars faded and as Mother drifted out of her room, the child slipped out from her covers and followed her down the hall. 

The child let her footsteps fall in time with Mother’s as she followed her through the house. They muffled her own, so only when she built up the courage to reach out and tug at her coat, she froze, hand hovering just over the door knob. In the dim light, Mother’s shape looked strange and unfamiliar, full pockets turning her silhouette misshapen. The child’s grip tightened around her cloak. She wouldn’t let her go. Not tonight.

“Father doesn’t like it when you leave.” She whispered. 

The shadow nodded. “I know.”

The child fidgeted. “I don’t like it when you leave.”

Slowly, like a pressed cushion regaining its shape, the figure in front of her resembled Mother again and she pulled the child in close, wrapping her in her arms. “I know.” 

The child clung to her, falling into the scent of grass and honey that had long woven into Mother’s hair. Perhaps tonight was different. Perhaps tonight Mother would stay. But when Mother finally released her, withdrawing all but her hands from her shoulders, her eyes seemed to glint in the dark and she said. “You may follow me tonight.” 

It was warm when they stepped outside, as if Night’s close embrace heated the earth. Mother led the child through the door, through the garden and out the wooden gate, her hands clutched tight around the child’s own. 

“Where are we going?” The child asked as her legs worked to keep pace with Mother’s. Her pace was quick enough to make her coat billow out behind her and her gaze was trained somewhere between the ground and the sky. She only responded with a small smile and the child pressed her lips into a line. 

They walked until the concrete road narrowed, turning into a footpath of gravel, dirt, and then no path at all. By now the road and the houses had long fallen away, opening up into a wide expanse of fields and space and a sky ripe with stars. The brush of wild-grass underfoot was all that accompanied them before they finally came to a halt.  The house felt like a distant dream as the child surveyed the land around her. The field they had stopped in seemed to stand alone, an island hovering in a black sea - singular and infinite under the glittering vault up above. 

“Keep watching.” Mother whispered when the child turned her gaze upward. The stars were so much brighter here, something alive and breathing. She felt Mother’s hand slowly withdraw from hers but the rustle of grass told her Mother remained close. So she watched until her neck began to ache. Until her eyes began to dry. She watched as the sky stood unchanged and her hand slowly grew cold in its emptiness.

She watched and watched and was near turning away to find Mother when something finally caught her eye. They were small and slow in appearance, shouldering their way past clusters of stars crowded together. Slow enough that they looked like stars that had somehow gone unnoticed but the longer she stared the more pinpricks appeared, multiplying like spilling beads until the sky was thick with new light. 

All of which, she realised, as she watched them gradually dwarf their neighbouring stars, were falling.

The child made a panicked noise and felt her hand grasp the air in search of Mother’s. When she failed to find it, she finally tore her gaze back down and raked it across the fields. Mother was still close when she found her, only a few paces away. Her dark silhouette stood wide and eager, her eyes glued upward. Under the mounting brightness of the falling stars, the child caught the glint of a jar in her right hand. It was one that might have held jam or honey, its cap gripped in her left. But it was not the jar that captured the child’s attention, but the grin spread across her face.

Mother’s smiles were always a small and secret thing. But here, as the sky fell, it was so bright and unguarded the child felt it competed with the descending lights above.

“The comets are here!” She called to her, eyes focused. “Stay close to me!” 

The child darted towards her, clammy hands gripping her coat as she watched the comets make their inevitable way to earth. The first hit the ground in the distance, far enough away that its impact was swallowed by the grass and dirt. The second was closer, landing with a sharp flash of frosty blue and a ringing chime. It was the third that carved an indomitable path towards them. The child felt her legs tense and her heart fight the confines of her ribs as her body braced to run, but Mother remained still beside her, her feet rooted to the ground. So, over the screaming of her limbs, begging her to move, the child screwed her eyes shut and waited.

There was a flash behind her eyelids, so bright it seared her shuttered vision with white, and a chime rendering her panicked mind silent. 

But, eventually, the white faded to grey and the grey faded to black. And her mind reentered itself. 

A few more moments of darkness passed before the child frowned and her eyes fluttered back open. The comets were still falling around them, blue lights falling in tear-like streaks, and Mother was still beside her. As were her hands on her coat. The grass remained undamaged around her.

“It’s here.” Mother’s voice sounded above her. A wash of something too bright and too blue flooded her vision and she was reminded of a few seconds prior. She squinted against it and made out a jar, the one Mother had been holding and within it, a glowing stone that refused to remain still. It hummed and hovered, twitching from one corner of the jar to the next. It was strange how living it looked. The child reached for it before she realised she wanted to. In her arms, the jar was lighter than expected, and buzzing and cold. Her gaze flick between the jar and Mother.

“You caught it?” 

Mother laughed and it sounded as light and as full as the jar held in her hands. “I caught it.”

The child could help the giggle that escaped her. A piece of the sky sat in her arms. “Will you catch more?” 

Mother tugged at one of her pockets, revealing another jar. “Many more, as long as they continue to allow it.” 

And so they did. The child ran alongside Mother, never easing her grip on her cloak as she danced under one comet to the next. With each new comet caught, Mother’s cloak grew lighter, settling back into its shape and they ran faster because of it. The flashing of blue light and ringing chimes became a rhythm to their turbulent dance. But eventually, Mother’s pockets emptied, and the sky soon followed, leaving the two to gather their prizes and sit in the returning quiet. With her head in Mother’s lap, surrounded by glowing jars, the child found she wanted nothing more. 

“The comets will be returning soon.” The child peered over at Mother. 

“Returning?” Mother nodded above her.

“They were just visiting after all. They don’t belong on the ground.” The child glanced at the comets inside the jars beside them. They were restless as before and the child vaguely wondered if there was a place where they could stand to stay still. She thought of the waltz in her room, her house sitting empty. She remembered it wasn’t entirely so. 

“Why doesn't Father like you here?” It was a soft question, so when Mother didn’t immediately reply the child thought she might not have heard her over the captured comets around them. But Mother shifted underneath her and she watched as she pulled a nearby jar closer. She cradled it in her palms, a soft blue glow illuminating the lines of her face. Somehow they seemed to weigh them down. “It is not that he doesn’t want me here.” She said at last, her fingers moving to the lid. They traced the metal in slow circles before they tightened, loosening the cap as she went. “Perhaps he knows I don't want to be home.” The comet was out of the jar before the child realised it could be, tearing through the dark like a haphazard brush stroke. A pebble falling deep into the sea. It was only now that she noticed the slow rise around her, the comet unburying themselves from the earth, starbound.

But I’m home. The child wanted to say. But as she watched the comets dance further into the night, fitting themselves back in the sky, she wondered how she thought she could compare. 

So instead, she whispered. “Will they come back?” 

Mother’s smile now was a ghost of a thing, fleeting in the darkness, but the child had never seen one more true. With a glint in her eye and her face tilted skyward, she said, “When they are ready to fall again.”