Beatrice felt like she wasn’t the type to look up at the sky, but when she did she felt strangely drawn into it. It wasn’t the moon or the stars that gave her that weird twist in her gut- the one that told her that she was only a speck of dust compared to the infinite expanse of the universe. The silver dots above her could only muster up so much emotion, after all.

No. It was the dim, empty, haunting darkness in between that made her feel so small.

It was a depressing thought, but one that she couldn't deny. Loneliness was her best friend, and it did its best to keep her company. It walked her to school, made sure she was well fed, kept her up at night.

Yeah, apparently when Beatrice’s social life went on a trip to destination As-Far-Away-As-Possible her sleep hitched a ride with it. 

She tried to fill in the nights of Loneliness haunting her with things to do, but sitting around and waiting for something to happen was incredibly boring to her. The internet wasn’t much of a sanctuary, oddly enough; she couldn’t find a reason to spill out her sad, pitiful guts to anyone that would listen on the other side of a glaring screen. It was too late to pick up a hobby she didn’t give up on halfway. For a strongly pessimistic girl, Beatrice didn’t like putting in the effort to make herself feel better.

And as time brought her to the darkest hours of the morning, when there was nothing left to do but sleep (and even then, she couldn’t bring herself to do it), Beatrice would pull at the heavy curtains of her bedroom window and look up, hoping for a distraction to take her away.

The darkness was there, pulling her closer, reminding her that there was a vast space around her, full of infinite people and places and opportunities and possibilities. A friend, a lover, and an enemy was out there, waiting. A soulmate, and a partner-in-crime. The happiest day of her life, and her worst. A paradise, a hell. Somewhere out there was a single spot on the ground where Beatrice could stand tall, surrounded by people she cared about, and say “This is where I’m supposed to be. Right here.”

And here she was, in a dingy room at three o’clock in the morning, and she was completely alone. Waiting. In the dark.

Feeling like she wasn’t living life the way she was supposed to.

Of course she’d feel helpless, looking up at that dark sky with thoughts like that. It was hard not to. She knew that she could be greater if only she was somewhere else. Beatrice felt desperate to prove that her life was one that she could be proud to live, and it made her restless enough to keep her awake despite her exhaustion. What would happen if she never got to that place? If she couldn’t make friends? If she didn’t get the chance to love someone, to completely belong to someone else, to change their world? Then what? Was she wasting her time in this room? Was she holding on to nothing more than fantasy? Would the things that had escaped her be lost forever? Would that darkness be all that she could fall back on, the only thing that she could find comfort in this strange, empty, dark, lonely, useless bedroom?

...

Apparently, she looked at the sky more than she realized...

She didn’t always feel like this.

There were some nights where she’d split the curtains and push the window open to let the breeze in. She’d look up, and the sky wouldn’t be pitch black. There was color there. Some greens, some blues, and all covered by an infinite number of stars. There wasn’t room for Loneliness to touch her under this sky. It was wide, and vast, and crowded, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t find room to sit into a pocket of blankness and forget all that she wished for. There was plenty of space to wish here.

Except… there. In an eastern corner, a small patch of stars had scattered apart, pushed away by a comet and its blazing tail. It burned brighter than anything she had ever known, and slowly but surely it was making its way westward with all the energy it could. It was moving far away from the place it had come from and knew that it was going somewhere better. Beatrice could watch it for hours as it streaked across the sky and the small dots of brilliant suns that who knows how far away moved to let it come through awed her. It inspired her. It made her believe that she would one day start her own adventure to the place where she belonged. She felt like this was a brilliant sight that she was sharing with many people at once and that they too were anticipating for the falling star’s journey to reach where it desperately needed to go:

An old decrepit woman gazed at it through her crystal ball, her eyes glowing with secrets of its passage. She relayed her insights to the people accompanying her- two guards, dressed in blood red and excited grins, watched over by a thin and cunning man clutching a glowing staff. He planned.

A mountainside of cats looked up in silence, the star directly above them. They were smart beasts, intellectual, and knew far more about the unfolding events than Beatrice even dared to realize. They looked up at the omen with pride.

Army after army after army, surrounded by campfires and anticipation and frenzy for an upcoming battle. They rubbed their hands together, whispered amongst each other, and prayed under the same starry sky.

And a king with long golden hair lounged across his own window seat. He found himself looking up at the single spot in the sky with the greatest anticipation, smiling.

Waiting.

Beatrice always woke up at this point, shaken. Her sky was gone.

And she was left with that feeling of emptiness.