Don't Place Your Trust In Stars

A steady breeze blew Mako in the face as he walked the barely outlined path winding down the sloping shoulder of the mountain, Ari shuffling her cold feet behind him. She had complained over twenty times since they had set off, Mako had counted. He had even contemplated turning back to deposit the little ginger frustration back in the deserted village, to await his return, but he knew he could not have started this journey without her, let alone finish it. He needed Ari to continue. Otherwise…he may as well have turned back, knelt before his demolished home and wept till the stars appeared and waned, and the sun shone through the clouds, until there was no more food to eat and he would be driven from his home to seek refuge or die from starvation among the skinny, watching eagles.

That couldn’t happen. Mako knew they had made the right decision to go find his father. It was their only hope to find answers – his only hope – and a better chance of survival for himself and Ari.

They had packed two sacks – blankets tied with knotted pieces of rope – full of preserves from those cellars they could find hidden beneath the debris of fallen homes, stocking up the fabric till it strained in angular clumps. Who knew how long they would be journeying for until they reached the village? Until they found-? Mako could not let himself get ahead of the present moment. Too many times he had wished upon a star, and believed the future would turn out just as planned; and too many times the stars had betrayed his trust. Yet he gullibly, childishly, pursued his wanton wishes, struggling to understand the concept of not jumping ahead in hope the stars seemed to teach him.

Ari’s ragged breath came up closer behind him and he heard the gasp a fraction of a second before he felt her whole body come hurtling into his back as she tripped on some hidden rock under the thick snow. The two toppled over and sat in a heap of snow, wet clumps of hair and feet tangled with each other, little bursts of laughter threatening to erupt from the parched confines of their throats.

“Sorr-” Ari’s apology was cut short by a loud hiccup that escaped her mouth, catapulting Mako into a series of snorts, as he tried to both clear his nose and throat, and control his laughter. When had they last laughed so earnestly? Up on the rooftop of Ari’s house? Had they had time to laugh then, before the storm hit?

The snowstorm hadn’t come back since the angry winds which had destroyed Artiget, but Mako feared being hopeful now. As he and Ari got up and brushed down the wet flakes of snow that had started to stick to their clothes, he looked towards the grey sky and then the journey before them. His feet traced the hidden path he had run down as a little boy years ago with his mother, down to the stream and the boulders and the grass which always seemed to be longer and lush lower in the valley. Mako kept his gaze trained forward, looking ahead to see the sloping hill weave unevenly, some mounds of snow higher here than others. Mako picked out the landmarks Eliza had taught him to recognise in case he ever got lost down this side of the mountain, or something happened to her by the stream so that he could run home and call for help. The higher mounds indicated at rocks embedded in the side of the steep hill, the seeming dents in the white expanses – little ditches which could trick the unobservant. The path would around and above, and led down lower and lower towards the foot of the mountain.

There they took a break, the expanses of white, damper and soggier here at the bottom of the valley, stretching as far as the eye could see towards a state of nothingless, the skies slowly gathering momentum as a new wind picked up, gradually pushing the greying clouds together over the approaching horizon.