Work Text:
Side by side, holding hands, grass tickling their necks, she describes stars across the darkened sky: white dwarf, supergiant, neutron. There’s hydrogen-helium composition and sequence classification and luminosity type.
He, too, describes stars across the darkened sky: the constellation Cassiopeia, a queen who angered the god of the sea; the constellation Pegasus, the winged horse that sprang from the blood of Medusa; and the constellation Orion, the gifted hunter armed with his shield and club.
“It’s late.” His fingers squeeze hers.
“Just one more.” She squeezes back.
His chuckle is as small as the patch of ground where their heads tip skyward and as large as the twinkling lights that fill the heavens. “You’ve heard them all.”
But he tells the story of the seven jewels of Ariadne’s crown and, as he does, both their eyelids grow heavier and heavier until the stars blur and the story slurs and sleep-soft breaths fall into sync.