You’d think stargazing would be relaxing.

Turns out, not so much. Not when your bandmate invited himself after finding you sitting outside on your own. When he complained that you were making yourself a stranger.

Aion stared up into the stars. He still remembered the constellations, having spent so many nights awake during childhood, with nothing to do but look up into the sky. After that, he’d gotten a book about them, and he’d felt a little less alone.

Crow was sitting next to him, talking a mile a minute. Aion could never quite understand how someone could have so many words inside of them that just had to get out. Not when the words he himself wanted to say always seemed so difficult to grasp, impossible to get out the way he wanted them to.

He listened to Crow talk, about the farm he’d grown up on, about the way the stars looked different when you came further out from the city.

Aion snuck a glance at Crow from the corner of his eye.

He was grinning as he told him about how his dad had taught him about a constellation they had named one year’s calves after, one calf named after each star, gesticulating way more than was necessary as he described each calf’s personality in detail, and how he thought it fit with the name of the stars.

Aion leaned his chin against the top of his knees, eyes turning back toward the sky as he sought out the constellation that Crow was so enthusiastically talking about.

He remembered the long, lonely nights where it had been just him and the stars, no friends to speak of, feeling like he never quite fit in.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel so alone.

Back to top