Once darker than the night...

“Every star was once darker than the night, before it awoke.”

- Dejan Stojanovic, The Sign and Its Children

I was walking home from work and the sun had well and truly set. The street lights were bathing everything in honey except for the glitter of frost on the pavements. Ice only ever seems to reflect the stars, that pure blue white light that's so sharp it almost cuts. But when I looked up at the sky it was black. Like looking into a pit, like looking into an empty forever.

In the city the stars are sometimes shy. Hiding behind clouds darker than pollution and unseen by eyes too blinded by tungsten and headlights. We look up and our hearts sink without a star to guide our paths even when we know exactly where we are going.

Stars may be thousands of light years away, may even have faded into nothing long before we see their light, but they are beautiful and there is something so hopeful about them. They are magic floating in the velvet of the cosmos, impossible and glorious, ready for wishes and delight.

There are places in the world where there is so little light pollution that you can see the milky way with your naked eye. You can actually see another galaxy hanging above you like a breath frozen and scattered with diamonds.

This was not one of those places. This was not one of those nights.

There was only the city, the glow of electricity, the slow rolling tidal wash of car tyres on wet tarmac and my footsteps echoing off the houses lining the empty street.

I hadn't realised how lonely the night could be without stars.

My feet plodded on, my eyes lingering on the cold shimmer of frost beneath my shoes and I turned the last corner before home.

As I passed beneath a street light, taking one last gaze at the darkness hanging above me, one hand rummaging for a key as my feet automatically carrying me forward, the street light winked out. Fading down to nothing but an amber ember faint behind glass. And beyond, in the sky, a star winked into existence, almost as if it had been waiting for that very moment to shine.

As I watched, the night sky awoke in the space between the street lights, glistening bright and luminous, a hundred galaxies, a hundred possibilities, a hundred wishes to wish upon.

Starlight makes the soul open. Starlight nourishes hope like the sun and water nourish a seed.

Sometimes the night can seem endless and dark. But all you need to do is turn a corner and look up. The stars are always there, it's just that we don't always see them.