Prompt: An unusual meteor shower has lasted a whole week.
Setting: Night-time, clear skies. Waxing Gibbous phase. On this day, the moon is 13.47 days old and 95.66% illuminated with a tilt of 118.629°.
accipitra,
now ava, watched the skies with burgeoning interest. it was not her first time looking up at an expansive canvas of indigo swirls and faintly pulsing lights. eddies of old stars imprinted upon an endless black -- and sometimes, if she was not paying attention too hard, a lone star was loosed from its anchor and sent snarling across infinite space.
tonight her usual show was different. the stars were there, and little clouds hurried across the skies to their eventual rest, but there was something else too. light, far beyond her -- it whipped and cracked and snarled as it snared through the atmosphere, and somehow ava thought she scented something new: burnt asphalt and singed stratosphere.
Fire lit the night.
Far, far from them, far away from water starved forest or sun scorched grass. Tearing through the sky in awesome display of wonder — power — creative strokes.
Everett did not fear this fire, though the compulsion to sing for the rain still bubbles in his chest. He ignored it. His singing did not turn the world or sway the heavens one way or the other. He did not need to fear what happened; he did not carry the world anymore.
Tonight he strolled through the moon touched fields, and happened upon one of his daughters gazing likewise to the sky. Her mere presence stole a smile across his face and he lowered himself to elbow crawl nearer.
Ava,
he said her new name, and reached out to offer her a gentle kiss, aren’t the night fires beautiful?
ava tore her eyes from the blotting heavens as sound snuffled behind her. her gaze lit up as she recognized everett, her little tail beating in staccato against the hard floor. while she uttered little more than babbles or coos so far, her expression communicated her excitement clearer than any words could as she met the man she would come to know as father.
his attention fixed on the canvas of blues and pale yellows above. ava turned back to the sky and breathed in response; beautiful was such a new word for her, but here was no better word to convey the majesty of the heavens above.