The Visitor Part 3: Learning to Live

I saw as it first flew through the evening sky like a flash of lightning, careening down fast, and soon dipping beyond the horizon. I didn’t know what it was then - do I even know now? -  but I had seen something like it once before. I had followed its direction. What else did I have to do? That time it had been a falling rock, dark and warm and unlike those around it. It left a trail in the ground where it landed and scraped away the grass. It was one of the bigger mysteries of the world to me, back then.

So I followed this one just the same. Another rock from the sky. From where could it have come? What propelled it? I thought, maybe, this time I might learn. But this falling object was faster, and traveled further. It took a day to reach its resting place, and what I found at the end of its scrape in the ground was not merely another stone, but something I cannot explain any better now than back then.

It was an unknown thing that was seemingly not grown from the ground as all that I knew, but forged from the stars themselves.

And from within it stirred a creature not of this place, a thing that did not belong here among the flesh and bone and leaf and stone world we called ours.

A thing that should not have been alive, could not have been alive, yet lived anyway - and ultimately, that gave me reason to live too.

When we first met, that impossible thing he was, he was by himself. I knew of nothing that could make him make sense, yet there he was before me. Was I an alien to him? If I was, I was not as interesting. He ignored me then, and instead wandered the grasslands, staring often at the sky. Was he lost? Did he come here by mistake? Perhaps this thing was not an intentional visitor at all, but just a star-creature with broken wings trying to get home again.

 Either way, he was something different, something intriguing, that I knew I would likely never again see in my remaining seasons if I let him get away. What else did I have to occupy the long, quiet days now? So I followed him, the fell-star, curious to see what he did and perhaps learn why he had come.

So for days he walked, tireless and without rest, northward across the green flat. He was silent and unwavering in his movement. He neither seemed to pause to drink, nor to eat. What did a star-creature feed on anyway? Was it only found in the heavens - fallen to earth, was he now starving? I wondered if this was what he sought.

But when he found the other, I wondered if his trek was not to find sustenance.

Perhaps it was to find closure. The visitor, I realized then, had been left all alone too. 

He didn't stay with the other for long, for it was beyond his help. So he kept walking, through nights and through days. I stayed near him, but unlike him I still had to rest sometimes. To find a meal, I would leave him for a while. He was easy to spot again later from the sky, colored like some poisonous thing. Was this why predators seemed to avoid him - or did they simply know, somehow, that he was not a thing they could eat?

That's how it was at first. He walked. I followed. I thought, eventually, I would get answers.

Still he wandered. He was restless. Always searching for something else that he couldn't find. 

But as the days became weeks, his search efforts grew weaker. Was he forgetting, or merely moving on?  His strides slowed, became less rigorous. He now stopped to look around, and his paths meandered. He began to take notice of me, to watch as I did and follow suit. 

I picked flowers. I pointed out birds. The wayward star-creature followed my cues, imitated my actions. I began to talk with him; at first gesturing to myself. He surprised me when he seemed to listen, and even more when he began to replicate my mannerisms. It astonished me when he began to use them in context. Slowly but steadily, Fellstar seemed to heal, and his true personality came through.

His inner workings were often unclear to me - they are even now - but I like to think I showed him that even after the greatest loss, there was always something new to find. And soon it was he, as often as not, who followed me. 

I may never fully know what he was. He didn't have a scent. He didn't seem to eat. He walked our world wholly outside the balance. All creatures, great and small, were tolerant of Fellstar. The hunters didn't stalk him; the prey didn't flee. He was special... different. And the animals seemed to know.

But I can say with certainty how he was. Far from a 'poisonous thing,' he was gentle and curious; he was kind. Over time his personality grew bigger. He no longer seemed to remember how - or why - he came to be here. 

So I gave him reason. We played games. We shared our experiences. We found joy. Across the widest chasms, we forged an unbreakable bond. Two lonely souls, isolated by space and by time. With each other's stories before left unknown, we found whatever we ultimately needed in each other.

Together we traveled our world. It was all new to him, and so through his eyes it became new to me, too. He learned to live for its own sake, not for some forgotten purpose.

There was so much here to live for - and I wanted him to see it all. Together, we would see it all.

We traveled together for many seasons, and in a way became one. He took after me, and I after him, until we both had changed from where we began. 

I wondered if Fellstar might last beyond me, or even past everything. 

But I would learn, eventually, that everything- no matter how extraordinary - one day must come to an end.