#STARFALL CALENDAR 2005 FULL#
#STARFALL CALENDAR 2005 WINDOWS#

Lulu scratches her familiar's head without looking up from her own work. Pix is gnawing on an uncapped green marker.

#STARFALL CALENDAR 2005 FULL#

Lulu is sitting at the kitchen table intently drawing with one hand and stabbing a bite full of pancake with the other, unconcerned with the food drama surrounding her. She shrugs and turns her concentration back to flipping the thin batter in front of her. “Lulu said she was hungry,” Poppy says over her shoulder. “Uh, Poppy, what’s going on? I was gone for, like, five minutes,” I say as Jinx elbows past me, making a beeline for the freezer. There is a trail of batter and sticky syrup linking her to the refrigerator and the counter. As I walk into the kitchen, Poppy is standing on a chair in front of the stove, turning pancakes on the griddle, her determination and focus evident from the bend in her elbows and the iron grip she has on a big metal spatula. As temperamental as Jinx is, she can be awfully predictable about desserts. Five seconds later I hear the door slide open and shut. “Shaped like rockets.” I shut the sliding glass door behind me and walk towards the kitchen.

“Popsicles?” “Yep,” I say as I step inside the house. Jinx pushes the enormous sunglasses up to sit on her forehead, making it look like giant plastic stars are shooting out of her pigtails. Kuro startles awake, yawns, and mischievously starts to tumble the still sleeping Shiro over in the grass. “Well,” I say, trying a different tactic, “I guess you don’t want any of the popsicles Poppy brought?” Jinx purses her lips and blows a raspberry in the air. I just think we should talk about… things. She loves it when she thinks she's right. She twirls the end of one long red pigtail around the tip of her finger, challenging me to give her something worth coming inside for. “Better soak all this up before it’s gone.” Feathered clouds pass in the reflection in her sunglasses. “Summer’s not gonna last forever, Lux,” she says without looking over. When she gets the bubble big enough to obscure her sunglasses, she sucks it back in with a loud pop. Jinx sticks a wad of fluorescent gum back into her mouth, chews loudly, cracking the bubbles with her teeth, and then slowly begins to blow a big, pink bubble. “Hey, are you coming inside? We’re going to get started.” She's got one earbud tucked in her left ear, but I can see the other dangling over the side of the recliner. Abnormally large plastic sunglasses cover her eyes and most of her eyebrows. Jinx is lying on a plastic lounge chair in the backyard, while Shiro and Kuro are napping in the grass at her feet. I crawl back into bed and wait for the dawn. Just a few pinpoints of light break it up. It's hard to see the stars from the city. I can feel it still, stretching on and on. The soft glow of the lights outside paints me and my room in shadow.Ībove all the sleeping quiet is darkness. I walk over to it and watch the street below.

#STARFALL CALENDAR 2005 WINDOWS#

I’ve taken to sleeping with one of the windows open. The darkness is gone, replaced by a muted gray. I'm in my bed, the blanket in a sweaty tangle. The last thing I see is their emblems darkening as their light shatters into a rainbow of ragged cinders. The tips of my own fingers start to glow and break apart. I'm not strong enough to keep us together. I try to hold on, but I can't stop them from falling. The atmosphere of the planet below us burns hot, and their lights ignite. I can't concentrate on where we’re going, the danger that's fast approaching. The horizon of a world big and blue rushes up to meet us. I stretch my arms out, but they're too far. They're sleeping, dreaming maybe, untroubled by the darkness that surrounds us.

Their faces are so beautiful, so peaceful. Maybe they were there from the beginning, but this is the first time I can truly see. It's like warmth and joy and comfort and laughter got balled up together so tightly they had no choice but to catch fire. Just when I'm about to give up, just when I'm about to let go, I feel them. What did I expect when I have a mouth full of nothing? My heart's beating too fast. My mouth opens to yell, to scream, but only silence comes out. Then someone or something's pulled the plug at the bottom of the darkness and I'm sinking further into the inky black. Then I realize that there's no surface to break. I tread midnight like water in a well, all the while the cold drip of loneliness slips down my back. I reach out, hoping that it is just a blackout, that I can just push away the weight of being alone like too many heavy blankets. All those familiar bits of light snuffed out, swallowed up.

It's like being woken up when the power's gone out. It's so dark, I'm not sure my eyes are even open.

Starfall calendar 2005