The soft, hoodwinked glow of the street-lamps pierced through the atmosphere, extinguishing the lambency of the alluring stars and satellites that conquered the night skies. The crisp night breeze glided through the individual strands of her curls and his backcomb, and it caressed their unworldly faces as they pedalled towards the grass field.
“Let go,” he said. “You’ll feel free.”
Her bicycle steered erratically the moment she allowed her hands to hover a mere inch above the handlebars. Having witnessed her fluster to regain control of her ride, he promptly looked away, only barely suppressing his snort.
Away from the bustling city and scintillating skyscrapers—the distracting civilisation—more celestial bodies unveiled their presence. Graced by the souls who have had taken the effort to reach these grounds, the stars put up a shimmering spectacle that was too stellar for anyone to be completely immersed in in just one night. With their bicycles parked, they rested their heads on their makeshift pullover-pillows, their limbs lay spread-eagled.
“How do you tell the satellites apart from the stars?” she asked.
“There’s an app for that. SkyView or something like that.”
“What a romantic,” she said as she glared at the contours of his moonlit face.
“As you are. You could’ve started this conversation with ‘it’s beautiful tonight’ but you didn’t. Anyway, you see those three twinkly things lined up in a column?” He traced the path of the stars for her. “They are the Drie Sisters. Or Three Sisters, part of this constellation named the Orion. Together they form the Orion Belt.”
Sparse in the trees from across the grass fields, the cicadas sang.
“Do you know which one’s Mars? Is that it?” she asked, her slender finger pointed towards an orange sparkle.
“Could be. I dunno. The Orion belt is all that I know. I have seen Jupiter and its four moons–Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto–through a telescope before. Jupiter looked like one of those bouncy rubbery balls that you can get by slotting a 20-cent coin into the ball vending machines from our childhood. But it would be pale-orange in colour, with a few white stripes slapped upon the orange. You get the idea. But it was cute. Miniature planetary stuff through some lenses. I kind of miss those days, along with the technical marvel that came with it. The anticipation as the ball, or even any other toys that drop out from winding those machines. Cheap thrills. Sometimes I would get so frustrated that I would just stick my hand in and try to pry the stopper open. Or I would shake the whole damned thing.”
“And soon you couldn’t use your 20-cents anymore. Those things started to charge by the dollars, right? It wasn’t really part of my childhood. I think that balls are rightfully a guy’s thing. I’ve had fluffy friends.”
“Those ponies make me sneeze. Or what did you have? Those lame bears?”
Both of them chortled; but maybe it was a little too loud for the night. Then there was silence. Comfortable silence. The grasses soaked up the weight of their bodies—the stresses of being, the problems entrapped within their hearts and minds—and relocated it to the earth beneath them. They had agreed that that night was thoroughly therapeutic.
“Hey,” he said, still mesmerised by the sight of the majestic ocean of lights that hung above. “Have you ever been in a quarrel before, and things got so bad that both of you just stopped contacting each other, severed your ties and maybe even left out your goodbyes? And then a few years down the road, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, or even right now when you look back at it, you cannot even remember what exactly had triggered the fight?”
“Yeah. We have all been through that. Most of us, anyway.”
“I think it’s sad.”
“How so?”
“For something that I can and have forgotten over a period of time, it must have been too insignificant of an issue to be significant at that point of time. Did you understand what I’ve just said?”
“That the matter was blown out of proportions? That now that as we are under these night skies, that everything else seems so fickle and minute?”
“Why do we even argue? Why had I?”
On a Monday evening, he broke silence to one of the people who really matter to him in his life. The sound was reciprocated and profoundly appreciated.
