The first thing I remember doing is checking my phone to see what time I'd actually woken up. 1:48 AM, and then I checked again a moment later, and it was 2:12. So okay, I didn't have to stay awake. But I was awake, and I wondered what I ought to do with that.

I decided that I would do something, and not just go back to sleep. I decided that after about an hour of trying to go back to sleep. Nothing in particular kept me up. I wasn't anxious, or uncomfortable, or thinking, or being distracted by noises, or whatever. I was just awake.

I sighed, rolling to my feet. I stripped down, wondering if the problem was that I was still in my day's clothes. Maybe my body was expecting a nap, instead of a proper sleep, because I was still dressed. I hesitated, naked. I couldn't see the picture in my sketchbook because of the low light, but as my fingers wandered over the page I could feel it there.

That one, and the one I had mime-drawn while listening to Fly From the Flames in Manu's living room.

I pushed both of those images away. I'm already naked, do I want a shower? I asked myself, pacing the length of my small room.

The answer was a solid no.

The closed laptop presented the possibility of going online, or maybe playing some games. A passing thought hit about becoming a nude livestreamer, and I wondered if there was much call for freckly redheads with small breasts reading poetry. Gonna be someone's jam, for sure, because that's the way people are. Maybe I could make a little extra money.

Even joking with myself, the idea was distasteful. No shade on those that do that, but something about the idea of me doing it put me right off.

I picked up my phone. Nearly a quarter after three. Just for fun, I texted Manu. No picture this time, all I said was, Hey, awake at a stupid hour.

I decided that it was time to let go a bit. The way the impromptu poetry session had gone that evening, the way things had gone with Manu before that, maybe the lesson for me was to just go with the flow and see what happened. And, unconsciously, I started getting dressed, which surprised me a little; the majority of the time lately, I'd been losing my clothes when I wasn't paying attention to my actions.

Grabbing a fresh pair of boxers and some warm fuzzy sweat pants just happened automatically while I was thinking. I was remembering what Rita had said when we met in the shower: The stars were so beautiful, they told me so much. Maybe they had something to tell me, too. I paused to look out the window, at the electric lights I could see any given night. The character was sometimes different, depending on the ground and the sky—the air glows if it's just rained and the lights are shining, or if there's snow cover reflecting them, and the different cloud levels could catch the light in different ways, too—but those lights were outside my window from dusk until dawn, and had been for three years at that point. They'd become very familiar.

They felt... cold, that night. Strange. I knew that the nights were starting to cool off, but it wasn't the air that felt cold, just the light.

Which was when I realized that I had gone with the flow right down the stairs and out into that cool air. I did a quick check to make sure that I had finished getting dressed, and had indeed taken my purse with my ID card so I could get back in to the dorm later. And I was not only dressed, but dressed appropriately for the weather, with a loose windbreaker over my loose sweater, and some thin gloves in my pocket in case my hands got cold.

I skipped past wondering how I hadn't noticed myself walking through the dorm. It wasn't important. I wanted to talk to the stars.

The stars were difficult to see in the campus lights, so I let myself just... walk. Stroll. Amble. I had a destination, I just didn't know what that destination was, but I knew it was away from the lights of campus. I supposed that that ought to have made me a little nervous, travelling alone in the dark late at night, but it really didn't.

I looked up at the stars. "Guess I'm not really alone, huh," I said.

The stars didn't answer me, and the moon was nowhere to be seen, and the sun would be busy over Australia or something. I figured that I couldn't count on the cosmos to save me from a mugger. Besides, what could the stars do? Have sent a meteor a bazillion years in the past to hit that exact spot at that exact moment if I did get jumped?

If anything would convince me of divine intervention, that would probably do it.

I started to have a conversation with who- or whatever was listening as I walked. It really did begin with me asking if I wasn't really alone, and I had half hoped to get a response, but wasn't completely surprised or disappointed at the silence. I can't say that I would have been that surprised if some supernatural voice did answer me, given how odd things were at the moment.

"So if I'm not alone, and if you're not just there in my head, how do I connect with you? How do I communicate with you?"

Of course those questions got me nothing.

"And if you're what's pushing these... episodes into me, giving me these poems... what does that mean for me? Does it mean I'm not capable of making anything on my own? Am I just an empty vessel, then, waiting for your... thoughts, your fire or whatever?"

I had left campus at that point, and was walking along a quiet road on a sidewalk near a wooded area. It was a sort of a back drive onto campus, not widely used except by people looking to avoid traffic on the main road, or for a few people living in the neighbourhood nearby so they wouldn't have to drive out to the highway. It was still fairly well-lit, all told, but it wasn't as bright as campus was. There were a couple spots that would be even darker, and that was halfway where I was aiming, but I'd have to see where my feet carried me.

"What about other creators? Are any of us capable of creating our own inventions? Or is it just the ones that have this... I dunno, this spark or something? Or this experience? Or maybe it's the other way around, all the really creative people don't get bothered by these supernatural shenanigans and its only us unexpressive saps that have to deal with you?"

The wind picked up a bit. That was all.

"All I'm saying is that I could really use some guidance on this right now, you know? I dunno, is this praying? Am I praying right now? Should I have really been going to church this whole time or some shit? Are you there, God? Jesus? Mary? Mohammad? Moses? Buddha? Vishnu? uh... That's all the religious figures I can think of, is anyone there? Hello?"

My phone made a little ping in my purse, and I dug it out, still walking, wondering if supernatural entities would communicate in texts, but no, it was Manu, replying to my earlier message.

Still awake? I just woke up and saw your text

I debated answering. I didn't really want to tell him that I was out wandering the streets. I didn't want a safety lecture or sympathy or an offer of a ride. I wanted to scream my fire at the cosmos and have it just acknowledge my pathetic little existence, a speck of dust on a speck of dust
compared to the vastness of eternity
no one, nowhere, and yet
torn by a fire no one can see
a spirit, a star, a comet
that flies and sparks and burns within me

I had sent it before I even realized.

The reply came almost as quickly.

Is it wrong to tell you that I kinda wanna jerk off to you reading that?

I laughed into the night. Only because it's so short, I sent back.

Then read it twice

I grinned. In the morning I'm gonna see this and blame it on you being up so late

So I get to cum AND I have an excuse? Fuck yes!

That got another laugh from me. I didn't realize we were at the sexting stage of things

I imagined his nonchalant shrug. We can be if you wanna be. Not like we haven't been at the sex stage of things, what's a horny 4 AM text?

You usually horny at 4 AM?

Sometimes, if I'm awake, if I've had a particularly good dream

And before I could respond, a second text came.

or a nightmare

And another,

or any dream, I guess

And finally,

or no dream at all

I rolled my eyes, still smiling. So you're saying if I want a booty call just to phone you at 4 AM

Ha, you don't have to wait until late at night, you can have a booty call any time you like

Again, I didn't have time to answer before another notification appeared.

I'd offer right now but I'm halfway done and I'm probably too tired to drive safely

It's alright, I'm not at home

Where are you then?

Out stargazing

That seemed to satisfy him, or at least didn't prompt an immediate reply. Or perhaps he was a little busy. I continued a moment later.

communing with nature, wrestling with angels, or demons, or whatever

That got me an answer.

I've got some wrestling for you

Looking forward to it

Tonight?

Best two outta three I replied, and followed that up with 7 PM after dinner?

There was a little pause.

You wanna bring an overnight bag?

That prompted some thought.

I'll let you know when you pick me up, I replied.

Perfect... now I'm kinda exhausted and a bit messy so I'm gonna clean up and go back to bed

I giggled and looked up from my phone to realize that I was nowhere near where I had been. For some reason I wasn't all that worried about it. I paused in my wandering and looked up at the sky, wondering if I could navigate like an ancient mariner. A meteor streaked across my view, surprising me some.

"So, is that a sign?" I asked the still-silent skies. "And if it is, what's it saying? That I'm doing things right? That I'm doing things wrong?" The little exchange with Manu, though, had brightened my spirits and quelled some of my frustration-born curiosity, not to mention some of that pent-up poetry. And the idea of him being aroused to the point of needing sexual release from nothing but a bit of rhyming imagery was pretty darn sexy, too. I liked having that sort of power. I wanted that power. More of it.

I knew the timing wasn't right, but I imagined that his jism shooting across his body coincided with the star shooting across the sky. There was something simply perfect, and remarkably stirring, about that juxtaposition. Or earlier how his semen shot into my... I held myself in a warm hug. That was a fun thought, to be a sky, a universe, a cosmos unto myself.

I was too far from my sketchbook, but I didn't think I would lose that particular image, and I certainly looked forward to reliving the feeling, the emotion.

He showed me a constellation of... of... I laughed. Some of that constellation had ended up on my shirt. I looked for the constellations I knew, or that I'd heard of, and wondered how many of them had been spurted from a celestial cock.

Are stars the sperm of the gods? Is the void of space a divine womb, and the planets her children? Are we all cells, individual actors of some grand organism, intended to live our lives and work our works towards the development of bringing an ancient child to maturity, our own cells living their lives and working their works to our greater purpose? Does our existence show that this humble island, this blue speck in black, has a chance against a cold uncaring universe? Those other, stillborn planets, devoid of cells with cells within, left with no sense or civility or artistry or claim on their inheritance, do they have souls like our Terra, our Gaia? Those monsters of rock and gas, should they bow to our unique blue speck, with its cells within cells and its consciousnesses building consciousness and its beings powerful enough to imagine the very gods that bear their names?

How many planets cross the sky every night that turn their faces towards Prithvi, towards Chikyū, towards Talamh, and see fires not of natural creation alone, light built in patterns that could not be random, and hear the voices of her cells calling out her name in a thousand thousand languages and a thousand thousand thousand words, and feel joy for their living sister in their dead hearts, or aspiration for in some distant eon growing their own cells built of cells, or a flash of envy at her jewels and songs that they may never wear nor sing?

This was art, not science, and even if the scale of size and distance didn't make the smallest bit of sense, the image alone called to me, not to mention the pseudo-mystic quasi-philosophy, not to mention the sheer, visceral naturalism of it. I was reminded of the theological idea that the power to name something is the power to shape it, the power to control it, to give it identity, and that concept needed to play into the poetry I was shaping. It already did—"beings powerful enough to imagine the very gods that bear their names"—but it was a concept that I needed to explore more, to reinforce.

My eyes followed the shape of the Big Dipper. We gave it that name. We drew the lines between the distant dots of light and used them to tell our stories, we told those stories to our tribes and communities and families and children and, standing there in that quiet corner of the city in the pre-dawn darkness, too far past midnight to even reasonably think of it as the night anymore, I was receiving that story, and telling my own to the cool autumn air.

But not just to the cool autumn air, I found out.

"That was beautiful," a familiar voice said.

I knew who it was. I knew that I would find her there, even if I hadn't realized it.

"Hello Rita," I said, looking down to the dark earth and seeing the lovely seer before me, sitting on a park bench near a small stand of trees. "I'm guessing we need to talk."

"Hope you got your rest," she said, patting the bench beside her.

"Oh, haven't you heard?" I replied lightly, taking the offered seat. "When you go out late at night to talk with the stars, you don't need sleep."

She smirked. "You might not think that after the sun comes up."

"Alright, fair. So. What do you have to tell me?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with 'everything' and go from there."

"Sure thing," she said, looking up at the sky. "One oracular reading, coming right up."