In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh. They are not so different from ours. They may not even be so good. But they do laugh!
~The Starry Night, by Thomas Hardy
When he’d woken, in a strange bed, and opened his eyes to a dark room with no windows, and heard the distant sound of music playing somewhere in the distance, Jack had almost laughed.
He remembered the last time someone had played him those songs - back before he’d become a star – and there was something about the way the voice carried into his ears, even though it didn’t come through any speakers, that made him want to sing along. He hadn’t thought of that for years, but here it came back to him anyway.
This is how it begins
This is how I met your kind
This is how we began
And this is why the whole world turns green, because this song is just like us
And just like us we’re dying, and dying fast,
and dying just like you
The sun has gone down already,
it’s just a little after eight
Jack could feel himself smiling as he sang under his breath. The music was still there - it hadn’t left yet - and he closed his eyes again as if it might disappear once more if he did.
It never does, of course.
When you wake up, in the morning,
you find that there’s nothing wrong;
you don’t really feel sick, or hurt, or lost.
Just as if nothing had happened.
Because that’s what it always is,
when you wake up.
There's always been nothing wrong.
When you’ve been sleeping soundly and peacefully,
you’ve never felt anything strange:
no pain, no sadness, no fear…
No nightmares either.
So if you' s awake now,
you can sleep well tonight...
Jack stopped singing and lay still for a moment, letting the soft notes drift around in his mind. It wasn’t until the last few moments, before he fell asleep again, that he actually realised what he meant. If he woke in the morning, he wouldn' t dream of anything at all. He couldn't remember dreaming, even for a single second, ever since he’d fallen asleep. And although he had some vague ideas of what it might be like to dream - he'd had plenty of those, over the last few weeks - he had never imagined that he’d ever find out if he would enjoy it, or whether it would bring anything to his mind except terror and suffering, or both together.
That thought, oddly enough, scared him more than most of the other things he found in his mind.
When you're falling down a long tunnel in an impossible way...
If it takes forever, I know you'll survive
If it takes forever, you'll wake up
And I'm still waiting, my love,
my dear one,
My love, my beautiful,
Oh my beautiful,
My darling,
My life...
I wish it were tomorrow,
Or tomorrow evening,
or tomorrow night
but this is today...
As Jack drifted off again, he was aware that he was feeling much better today than yesterday. Not physically, certainly - he was exhausted, tired to the core, but also strangely refreshed - but mentally. There was no reason to think about yesterday, he realised with a sense of sudden joy. Nothing had changed from last night, when he'd first sat up on that chair. Nothing would ever change again. This was how it always was.
Except that he knew now that something had. The music had been gone, but he'd heard voices, in dreams. Voices that weren't his own. He couldn't quite make out what they said, but it was clear that someone else had taken their place. Someone who knew how important today was to Jack and wanted to make sure that he had it, and didn't forget. Maybe it was some of his father's people, looking after him? Who knew? What mattered was that it was the most precious thing anyone could give him.
When Jack woke, it was nearly eleven pm, and the moon was full. He rolled out of bed, stretching his arms above his head, then pulled on some clothes. After that he stood, thinking for a moment, and ran his fingers through his hair a few times. He looked exactly the same as he usually did: tall, handsome, with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. Except that he felt different. Like maybe he wasn't quite himself anymore. He couldn't put a finger on the feeling, though, and he sighed. That was alright. There wasn't too much he could do about it, apart from try and get used to it. As long as it stayed constant, everything should work itself out.
A soft knock on the door drew his attention away from the mirror. “Come in,” Jack called. There was another quiet knock, and then one more
