The Stars

A cool breeze woke him up. It was the middle of the night, the dark stretched ever long. The dying embers of fire glowed red as the gentle wind went through them. All was silent and dark. He was about to close his eyes back, when he saw someone sitting on a nearby log. Sitting silently and so still that you could have easily missed her. She was looking up, up into the sky. He slowly got up and moved to her side. The stars reflected in her eyes twinkled extra bright. Her eyes silvery gray were mesmerizing. “What are you looking for?” he asked. She looked at him questioningly. “Its like your searching something among the stars, your eyes were roving all over them as if you wouldn’t rest until you got answers. What are you looking for? In the stars?” he asked again.
“The stars are bright tonight; I was looking for a reason for their brightness.”
“And did you find it?”
“No. they hold many secrets and they do not part with them so easily, it will take more then one night for them to say something.”
“You say so as if you know them very well..”
“I do. I spend every night probing deeper and deeper into their secrets, trying to find a reason, a reason for everything, a reason for my life. I do not have much to do at night, so I look at the stars every night and challenge them till they slowly fade out to dawn.”
“Night is for rest; do not exhaust your mind when it needs to rest!”
“I cannot rest the same way you do at nights, my sleep was taken away from me a long time ago..”
“What do you mean by that? What happened?”
She looked at him with blazing eyes, measuring whether she should answer his question or not. His eyes were troubled, and she got intrigued that why was he so troubled by this.
“I lost faith in all bonds, there was no such thing as a family. A family who couldn’t protect me from themselves. That was when I woke up, I was very small and I haven’t been able to sleep since. My rest is this, my challenge to the stars. They bring peace to my heart, they mend my wounds and that is why I’m rested every night after I watch them.”
He looked at her amazed.
“Go back to sleep, I will wake you at dawn,” she said, and then she went back to probing into the stars.
He went back to his bedroll, something had happened in her past. Something that had altered her completely, so much that she had lost her sleep indefinitely. He closed his eyes to call back his sleep, but he could not, not when she sat there alone and fought with the stars.