DANIEL

A young man perches atop a prominence and stares at the nighttime sky, the crescent moon emphasizing the gentle curves of his clean shaven face. His clothes pressed and new, hair recently cut. He stares at the stars as if counting them, and sees that they are absolutely innumerable. His gaze stops and focuses on a single star. It's a brilliant star that pales those stars around it. The twinkling light of the star takes a faintly golden hue, as if it were the jewlery of a goddess, reflecting it's light to this world. Enamored with the beauty and wonder of this single star, he stands up, and picks the star from the sky. The star, losing it's place in the heavens, can no longer shine. It's light extinguished, the young man has only a memory of the star's prior radiance. He sits back down on the hill’s peak, and resumes his survey of the heavens.

The youth's gaze drifts across the sky until another star forces his gaze to a halt. It’s a lovely blue star. Not as bright as the first, but still beautiful in another indescribeable way. The boy knows that if he tries to have the star as his own, it will fade like the first one. So he just sits and watches it, admiring it’s beauty from afar. He watches this new star for some time, twinkling as a diamond caught in a ray of sunlight. A shooting star speeds across the sky, and snatchs the blue star straight away to it’s home at the end of the earth. The young man realizes that he can never have a star of his own. They're all so far away, he can see their warmth and light, but he cannot feel it.

He becomes discouraged. Afraid to focus on any one star, he views the heavens from his eroded perch to this day. The once young man now aged and wrinkled. His hair long and shaggy, filled with ages of dirt and leaves. His clean-shaven face now the home of a distrought and unkempt beard, whose only purpose seems to be covering the tattered rags that once were his chic wardrobe. The aged man still sits on the top of the hill to this day, searching the skies for stars like the first two he chose. But every time he sees one, he merely glances at it and moves on, fearing that if he dwells too long on a single star, it will disappear like the others. Many years have passed since he first saw those stars, but he is still drawn to them, he remains on the hill. So if you ever see an old man on a precipice, worn from wind and weather of ages past, don’t pass him by. Sit and keep him company, for he is among the loneliest in the world. Not even the stars of the midnight sky can keep him company.