@starswept : ❛ what do you think the stars wish for then? ❜ ( kalim to ruggie ) / accepting.
Kalim is — something else. Once upon a time, this sort of fantastical, rich - kid shit had just seemed like an opportunity to take advantage of him, and not long after it pissed him off, but now it mostly just seems…sort of sweet, in a sad kind of way. He thought that Kalim’s strangeness was a symptom of an easy life, but, as he often does these days, he wonders if it’s just Kalim. Ruggie’s never had the time to wonder about the stars like they’re sentient; growing up in the slums crushes that kind of fairytale thinking out of you young if it doesn’t kill you first. It’s cold, scrappy, and you have to be the same. Stuff like this is ——
It’s blurring images, nothing concrete, when the memory comes. Another night like this, beneath the stars, in the slums of Afterglow Savannah instead of on the balcony Sacarabia ( an impromptu cooking lesson that ruggie keeps agreeing to because kalim always buys food enough for days ). He was younger — couldn’t tell you how much younger, whatever passed for a childhood fading into disjointed memories and the perpetual need to survive. But he remembers climbing to the roof of the building he and a handful of other families lived in late one night, hoping to escape the suffocating heat of so many bodies so close. A cool night, no wind, the stars so clear he felt he could touch them. One by one, younger children joined him, kept awake by the heat or their nightmares or something worse. Still kids, but not in the way Kalim got to be.
One of the smaller girls, sick and going - to - die and everyone knew it, even her, asked him for a story. Ruggie hadn’t been much of a storyteller back then, but he’d managed something, he knows. He can’t remember the story, or even if it involved the stars at all. But he remembers staring at the dark - blue sky and the blinking lights within it.
The kid who asked for a story died a few weeks later. All things considered, that was probably a happy ending.
Kalim’s still smiling, waiting for a story, innocent in a way that Ruggie ( that ruggie’s family ) never got to be. A few months back, when they first began their strange ritual of cooking together, he might have spun a story just to remain in Kalim’s good graces. All the easier to keep getting fed that way. But now…Ruggie really thinks about. He looks back up at the sky, smiling something sharp and easy and wondering.
( he’s not sure what he’s wondering about. the stars, or what it’s like to grow up with enough to eat, or —— kalim. )
“Shishishi —— you sure think about some strange things, Kalim.” He casts a gaze back to the other, and his confused expression, and laughs again as his head tilts back. “I bet they wish for the same things people do.”
Not that Kalim has ever felt what’s it like to wish for enough food to stay alive, or wish for a loved one to live when they wouldn’t, or wish to live so much he’d kill for. But…
“Everybody just wants a story.” A happy ending, that’s all. Kalim will probably even get one. “Stars, too, probably.”