Burning with Optimism’s Flames

I can remember asking him, ‘What are the stars? Where do they come from?’

He would tell me that the stars are burning worlds, caught forever in their unending flames, raging, roaring against the night. They look out beyond their fragile spheres for places of calm and serenity to shine their brightness and bring life.

He would clasp me around the shoulder and say that we were like stars. We had to use the energy within us to defeat the cold spaces, to turn away the dark things that dared to destroy life. We had to find our own calmness and serenity even when it was denied us.

I don’t think I understood him then. I was too small, and my brother never spoke in the concrete terms that my brain could comprehend.

Looking back on it, though, I think that’s when P.J. began to burn.

• Intermediant Izzy Ring, The Heaven Facility