Space's Lost Daughter
A goodnight story: soft & strange fiction, if that's your jam
In the absence of sleep, Space’s daughter remained faceless, floating, and failing to throw a frisbee. She remained nameless, the fragments of who she was screaming “girl” and “amber” and “archer” – no sounds attached to descriptors desperately clinging to her essence. She’d had her way with trying to be good, obeying time, fading seamlessly into cosmos. However her wanting broke rules, urging her to play in the stars, kiss the handsome and beautiful ones – become something other than lost and forgotten offspring. An invisible, silent space creature in the blue, turned loudly rebellious under the nod of a moon – every part of her aching for more volume, more colour, and more truth. She couldn’t possibly keep living like this.
Space’s daughter stepped into citrine visions and allowed them to paint her a version of girlhood. It was a story where she was always the one seeking and chasing, scared she wouldn’t be able to hold onto what she found. Despite dancing and running, she was so often stuck with the middle traffic light, living in the pause while humanity turned grey like pencils’ shading. Her striking nature went unnoticed, trapped in an unknown part of the sky – her tears melted into constellations and nobody knew she was there, crying.
She thought she’d perhaps always be stuck with this baggage, including grieving her lack of a girl’s reflection, with nothing around to help shape her into a woman either, no matter how many years she watched begin and end. She floated, she cried, and she denied, for she had to. Yet her dreams remained the colour of honey – still secretly hopeful life would change. She realised change could start small, and she should choose herself a name – a real one. Speak it into stars in bright manifestation, even if she couldn’t hear it from another’s lips. So she did. She picked syllables and worked them into a prayer that matched the flowerpots of her mind. She said the name all the time and it held her in loneliness.
Story says, it was the beginning of her becoming. Her name spinning through space until her orange spirit soared its way into human understanding. She never gave up, not until she was seen and loved by someone special. You can hear this in poetry written for Space’s daughter, who fell from the sky with stumbling, sparkling force. Her lover knows her name, and they know what occurred as she broke free, following a glowing green light and gaining all she’d previously gazed at. After what felt like many lifetimes, she finally got to grow up ordinary. The brilliant kind of ordinary that lets love in, and looks forwards. Her tastebuds alive, her limbs heavy and swinging, and her skin itching with delight – she wouldn’t dare look backwards.
A daughter, finally learning physical touch – diving into ocean reflections that mirrored her resilience. She gradually turned grey like the once distant drawings. Every silver hair and wrinkle proof she was no longer lost – she was found. I bet she sometimes looked up, knowing the universe still sang to her a lullaby. She was always a daughter, after all, but she was so much more than that. She held a golden key in her hands, with all that beautiful pride, for she’d carved it herself.
With her head on a pillow, she got to know rest. An alarm set for 8am – time that can be felt and can’t be argued with, in a way that was as comforting as the bed. Finally, she could sleep.
She got to dream in this life that was worth every wish, and wash a grinning freckled face in the morning.
It seems I can’t escape the theme of humanity, especially lately, even in fictional space. Perhaps though, in a world where if you search “writing” and “job vacancies” together, you get a computer trying to convince you to become an AI trainer, that’s actually where my strength lies. Thank you so much for reading – feel free to share this piece if you liked it, and subscribe if you’d like to read more from me! In the meantime, I have a big archive you’re more than welcome to stalk 💜
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this is so beautifully written, it feels like i’m watching someone become real in front of me!
IS THERE SOMETHING YO CAN'T DO??????? read this last night and had the sweetest, most magical dreams<33333