Young Writers Society

“They have the stars in their eyes,” the old man whispered in the quiet hours of the night, when the pub was nearly empty and the ticking of the old clock on the wall was louder then the few patrons who gathered around him.

“They move so gracefully, like dancers,” he continues, taking a sip of his drink and hunching back over the worn surface of the table.

“How do you know you weren’t just dreaming?” one of the listeners asks loudly.

Dark, weary eyes stare up at the man, and the low rumble of the old man's voice answers with a memory behind his words, “A pact.”

The speaker, no longer willing to listen, scoffs, “Okay old man, whatever you say.” He chugs down his drink, golden liquid running down his chin in streams of wasted words.

The old man watches him for a moment longer, then lets his gaze droop down into his cup as he returns to the memories of his youth, “They all wore crowns. Some of them were all flowers and leaves and grass, some gold or silver, or jewels, or gems. There was this feeling in the air, like a kind of buzzing that you don’t want to go away,” the man seems to grow younger even as he speaks, with every sentence his wrinkles smooth, his energy returns.

And then, as suddenly as it came, the old man’s new youth faded away, “They took me to their capitol building. Like a castle, but everyone lives there. They don’t have a leader, but one of them took charge. We made a pact. I say nothing, for the rest of my days about what I saw that day or…” he trails off, an aching sort of pain in his voice, but also a resignation.

His audience of two now, for the speaker had left in his impatience and disbelief, unknowingly held their breaths as they wondered painfully if what they thought he was going to say would leave his cracked lips next.

Removing himself from his memory, the man finished his statement. Once the words were in the air, they stayed there. Heavy on the slouching shoulders of the old man and painful to the ears of the two listeners who had developed a sort of companionship with the man, the words trapped them there.

Finally, the silence was broken.

“That’s correct,” says a girls voice from the center of the bar.

The figure to whom it belonged wore a crown of flowers over her short brown hair that framed her ageless face. The stars were in her eyes.

The old man’s bottom lip quivered, but his voice was steady, “You haven’t aged a day.”

The girl’s lips briefly twitched into a smile, then returned to a resolute line, “You’ve aged many.”

The man laughed, a painful sound punctuated by a tear dripping off his eyelashes, “Do I have to leave now?”

The girl walked forward, her lace skirt swirling the shadows like smoke, “We can wait for tomorrow.”

Suddenly, or maybe not so suddenly, they were alone in the old pub with stories filling the air between them and memories saturating their thoughts.

But the sun could not be delayed.

And the pact could not be broken.

So the old man’s body dropped onto the table, his soul gone not by the hand of the reaper, but the by hand of a friend who hadn’t aged a day with the stars in her eyes.