They laughed, they chortled, crowed and cackled,
That I should strive to reach a star.
Though I feared to singe my hands upon its burning points, cringing in fear, both at the pictured pain, and that oh, so possible drop into dreadful dark forever if I fail...
I reached...
With an agony of aching muscles, and, creaking, crying joints fighting this unaccustomed contest of my heart.
I touched...
For one dread moment, I felt a pain, one part fiery heat, and one part fear of the failure of my final hope, which had so completely used, and abused, all resources of body and soul.
My fingers closed...
Not on feared emptiness or fire, yet, somehow upon that fearsome flaming thing which which drew me upward, outward, shattering that which I had once been, gathering me in and flinging me outward into that gathering of stars, out towards the farthest limits of the Universe all the time spreading the warm power of its being from fingertip to heart, creating one immortal part of my being.
I defeated death...
If all who have ever known my name should today be erased at the pleasure of some maddened unnamed god, the star my dream has become, withstanding the icy cold indifference of those two destroyers of men, and the dreams of men...time and death.
For I strove...
To reach a star.
Donovan Baldwin