Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Cosmic Lines

Lying flat on my back, I stare up into the night sky while the tall grass tickles my neck and ears, and rustles loudly with every movement I make. Away from the lights of town, the stars are stunning in their bright contrast to the dull black sky. During the twenty minutes I lie there, I see at least five shooting stars flash across the sky and disappear into the darkness.

It is easy to spot the constellations. There is Cassiopeia, relaxed and peaceful in her W-shaped throne. Here are the Pleiades, the seven sisters who have gathered together in a close knit conference to discuss profound celestial matters. And there, low on the horizon, is the Big Dipper, one of the first stellar shapes to capture the eye.

As I lie there, looking at the Big Dipper, a less-natural light intrudes on my field of vision. An airplane, with blinking lights, flies across the sky at the very bottom of dipper's pan. I don't think anything of it at first, but as I watch, the airplane crosses directly over the bright western star of the dipper's pan and follows a perfectly straight line toward the eastern star.

How funny, I think to myself, not wanting to disturb the silence by speaking aloud, That airplane is flying across the bottom of the Big Dipper!

After just two or three short minutes, the plane reaches the eastern star of the pan, and as it touches that star, something quite extraordinary happens.

It keeps right on going.

I don't know why, but subconsciously I suppose I'm expecting something different - maybe I expect the plane to stop, or perhaps to rebound off the star. Silly me. Of course the pilot, unable to see his path as I see it, has no idea that he is flying a cosmically extraordinary line.

It makes me wonder, as I naively stumble through life, what cosmic lines am I walking, without ever realizing it?

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