It had been days since I had last met her. Sometimes I would try to follow her through busy markets, getting glimpses of her without her noticing. But I would notice. I would notice that black wavy hair melting around a face with a smile that could hypnotize any mind. I would notice her habit of being in this world one moment and in some other in the next. Lost maybe despite such a crowd of people to some other time and space. Maybe she knew I was looking. Maybe she wished I was looking.
So many nights gone by since we last sat on the flight of stairs out side my house, facing uphill towards the towering mountains right below a dotted sky. So many words gone by since I had told her that I loved her and she had held me tight. I would stare into those deep dark eyes as they would gaze up at the stars. She would tell me about the constellations and the tales they told. She would tell me how she wanted to live in the stars and I would tell her she was mad. She wanted to be an astronomer, and I told her she was already all the stars in the sky.
Yet, so many days since she had been able to sneak out of her bedroom window at night and run across our little town on this hillside. Her mother was the thorn. Ever since that unfortunate day, for better or for worse, her mother had yelled her lungs out and threatened me to never return or visit her daughter again. And now, ever since her aunt had moved into her room and she into her mothers, it became impossible to carry out her little escapades at night.
There was a chill that night as I sat alone on the top step outside my door. The street a little below was foggy, illuminated only by the hint of a distant street lamp. None of the starts shone themselves tonight. No, not one, yet the moon stood bright. Full, but slowly descending into the wrap of the mountains ahead. Yes, it seemed like a very lonely night with only my aching longing for her to accompany me. However things are rarely ever what they seem. Besides the sounds you usually heard on such ghostly nights I captured the sound of faint footsteps. Light in their weight yet a steady brisk pace in manner. They grew closer untill they eventually stopped. I looked over my shoulder and down at the pavement over the side of the staircase and saw her standing, looking up at me with that smile that could melt me even in this cold. She came up and sat beside me, and we talked once again with not even the stars to disturb us now. She told me her mother and aunt had gone to the town fair, and she had herself stayed back with the excuse of feeling sick. In any case it didnt matter how she was here, but that she was beside me at all.
We talked for what seemed like lifetimes and yet not enough before it was time she got up to leave. Barely an hour maybe, but she had to make it back home in time. She gave me one last kiss on the cheek and glided herself down the stairs trotting back into the fog in the direction she came from. I got up and watched her disappear into the darkness, dreading how the darkness hid my daughter away from me once again.
