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A Starry Sort of Hope

by Torrance Elizabeth

Danika knew Astraea’s starship would never reach the stars.

It was a cardboard box, after all.

Even so, Danika stood on the shore at the edge of town and waited for the launch. They looked out at the silvery sea that stretched on long enough to reflect thousands of constellations from the inky sky above. Shh, shh, whispered the waves, curling in to kiss Danika’s bare feet before tip-toeing away again in an eternal game of peek-a-boo. Danika watched various townspeople mill about, all here to watch a loved one be sent into the stars.

On a blackened stretch of sand sat a starship, sealed shut with tape. A powder candle rested on the top.

“It’s not a starship, it’s Astraea’s starship,” Ilona had said. “It’s different.”

Which was precisely why Danika had said nothing. When the starship rocketed up towards the heavens, Ilona would see a burst of ruby fire: the stars claiming Astraea as one of their own. Danika wouldn’t see anything but the fading sparks of a fallen starship.

“We will now begin the send-off,” announced Zoja Daviau from beside the starship. She said the same thing at every starship ceremony Danika attended and could never quite keep her voice from quivering.

The people gathered next to Danika drew closer to the starship, and Danika let themself fold into the crowd. They fell as far away from Astraea’s starship as they could without losing sight of Ilona.

Ilona, who wore a plum-colored tulle dress and a smile that creased the corners of her dark eyes; those same eyes met Danika’s and lit up like a thousand suns.

“Come over here,” Ilona whispered.

Danika shook their head. “I…”

…don’t know what will happen if I go and stand so close, but I won’t be smiling like you are.

“…can’t,” they finished lamely. “It’s just family over there, remember?”

Remember when Astraea would joke that if you and I ever get married she would be my older sister then, too?

Ilona pursed her lips but nodded anyway. In unison with her parents, she placed a hand on her sister’s starship and closed her eyes, revealing glittery purple eyeshadow that sparkled in the moonlight. Conversations around Danika hushed. Even the waves stilled, the moonlit water lingering every time it pulled forward, as if straining to hear the ceremony.

“Astraea Argyros,” Ilona began the prayer, her parents’ voices joining with hers to create a silvery sort of melody. “May you launch into the sky and soar through the cosmos. May Tenebrutam bless you with their guidance and make your journey one of ease and quickness. May you always remember your time here with us: every laugh, every tear, every scream, and every scrape.” The family paused to draw a unified breath.

Danika swallowed as their throat went dry.

Ilona let out a soft, shuddery exhale. “And may you watch us from your seat in the sky, waiting for us to eventually join you.”

She and her parents stepped back. Ilona’s warm gaze found Danika’s once more. She smiled at them, but Danika could see that her legs trembled, her feet pressed into the damp sand like the only thing keeping her standing.

I wish I was holding your hand, Danika thought.

Instead, they gave their girlfriend a thumbs-up and tilted their head.

Ilona gave Danika a double thumbs-up and a wide smile in return, then redirected the question back to Danika.

Danika wondered if the strange squeezing feeling in their own stomach counted as being okay, or if they’d eaten too many appetizers at the pre-ceremony party earlier in the evening. They gave a thumbs-up anyway. If Ilona was okay at her actual sister’s starship ceremony, then Danika would have to be, too.

“Please join the Argyros family in a prayer to Tenebrutam,” Zoja said.

Even Tenebrutam couldn’t save a cardboard rocket from its fiery demise. But Danika looked to Ilona, who radiated a growing hope with every word. So, if only to distract themself from their dark thoughts, Danika said the words with as much feeling as they could muster.

“Tenebrutam,” they said with the rest of the gathered townspeople, “with all that we ask, know we are eternally grateful for your guidance and gifts. Thank you, O Spirit of the Stars.”

Ilona joined hands with her parents and lit the powder candle attached to the starship. Ruby flame sputtered and sparked and illuminated the crayon mural that decorated the starship.

Astraea had helped Danika build starships every year for Stardust Day when they were younger. She’d guided Danika through recreating their grandparents’ starships, and shown them the best way to launch one. Never had Danika considered that Astraea would be the one in a starship of her own, and so soon.

Danika couldn’t make their lips smile anymore.

It’s just a starship. Just like all the other ones.

But all they could see was Astraea, curled up in a coffin.

It couldn’t be a starship—not with her inside.

Ilona stepped away from the starship as the rocket ignited and the starship launched off the beach. It left a trail of flickering embers and curling gray smoke in its wake. The starship soared up to the stars until a bright flare of scarlet fire enveloped it and a silvery rain of ash fell upon the sea.

A sharp pain stabbed Danika’s chest, and they pressed their hands to their heart.

Their chest continued to ache as the beach emptied and the stars disappeared behind clouds. When Danika arrived home, they collapsed on their bed and fell asleep to dying embers flickering behind their eyes.

---

Before the first strands of morning sun slipped through Danika’s curtains, a familiar knock on the front door forced their eyes to open.
Danika darted down the creaky staircase, still fighting one last tangle out of their blonde curls, and tugged open the old wooden door to reveal—as expected—Ilona. The gleam in her hazel eyes could mean only one thing: her mind whirred with the dangerous determination of an idea.

“I’m going to the stars to bring Astraea back,” Ilona said.

Danika’s heart dropped to their feet.

“Will you help me?” Ilona asked, like that was even a question, like there was a possibility Danika would say no.

I should say no, Danika thought. I can’t get her hopes up.

“Of course,” Danika said instead. It was an instinctive reaction, really, bypassing their carefully-constructed mental filters of right and wrong words, and the results of each. The hug their girlfriend gave them, an unspoken yet heartfelt thank you, surely made the decision worth it.
But the gravity of the situation soon seeped into Danika’s skin and dragged them to the ground—the ground, which refused to release anyone into the stars until their time arrived. So why did Ilona believe she could reason with reality? How?

A rocket, Danika realized.

But rockets were for the dead.

Ilona pulled back but kept her hands on Danika’s shoulders. A sunshine smile illuminated her face. “It’ll be like she never left!” With a breathy laugh, she flung her arms around Danika’s neck and sank against their body. “We’re going to get her back, Dani,” she whispered.

For a split-second, Danika allowed themself to forget about logic. They focused on Ilona’s head on their shoulder, on wrapping their arms around Ilona’s waist and holding her tight. Maybe if Danika held her tight enough, they could protect her heart from the heartbreaking sting of disappointment and loss.

I wish I could hold you like this forever, Danika thought, pressing their lips to Ilona’s hair. They wanted to pull her from the depths of grief before she ever tumbled into them. And building a rocket—stealing a star from the sky—would help.

So Danika took Ilona’s hand and led their girlfriend through a cluttered hallway and up to their room, which housed organized paraphernalia in the form of schematics and blueprints for various projects in progress. Medals from elementary science fairs, contest entries, and engineering championship competitions hung from hooks around the room. Robots in the forms of various mechanical animals sat on a series of evenly-spaced shelves along the walls. Boxes of books on space, physics, rockets, engineering, and scientific principles crept out from every corner of the room, the spines worn but each one organized in alphabetical order.

Ilona sat on Danika’s bed. Danika uncapped a dry erase marker and started a list of rocket-building necessities on their stand-up whiteboard.

“We’ll need a parachute,” Danika led with, “to help slow our descent when we return—”

“Rockets don’t have parachutes, Dani!” Ilona laughed. “We’re going to reach the stars!”

“And…when we get there, we will plummet back down to the ground,” Danika pointed out. “We need to make a rocket that can make it there and back. And one that can fit you, me, and Astraea.”

Ilona tilted her head. “But rockets are never that big.”

Danika drew a breath and met Ilona’s gaze with a tentative smile. “Well, this one has to be, if we want to come back.”

Ilona’s legs bounced against the side of the bed and her eyes were wide and bright; she held a childlike enthusiasm in the sense that nothing about this plan was realistic and yet she grinned a gap-toothed grin anyway.

I have to do this for her. Danika nodded. I have to try.

So Danika began to draft design after design of plausible rocket ships. They poured over every book they owned on aerodynamics and propulsion, on atmospheres and engines, on rockets and space. Their room became a minefield of empty mugs full of dried tea bags, dead pens, and precarious piles of books. Ilona shuttled food and drink up and downstairs until she left at nightfall, yawning but shining brighter than Danika had ever seen her.

“You should go eat dinner now,” Ilona reminded Danika as she buttoned her coat. “Then go to sleep. We can work on everything tomorrow, okay?” She sprung forward, wrapped Danika in a hug, and kissed their cheek.

“I love you,” she whispered as she pulled away.

Thank you hung silently spoken in the air, obvious in the lightness with which Ilona skipped out the door.

Danika fell asleep bent over blueprints for a final design, a model designed after Astraea’s starship. In their sleep-heavy mind, a singular thought dared to whisper: Maybe this starship will be the first one to actually return.

---

When Danika was ten years old, they met Astraea Argyros for the first time.

“This is my older sister, Astraea,” Ilona said as she dragged Danika on a tour of her house. Astraea sat at the kitchen table, sketching away at a pad of paper while wearing a paint-splattered set of overalls. As Danika passed her drawing, they caught a glimpse of the artwork: a full moon, drawn in charcoal and surrounded by smudged stars and hazy clouds.

“I like space, too,” Danika said with wide eyes.

Astraea looked up and laughed. It felt like a warm hug, a sound so bright and warm and familiar, despite Danika never having heard it before.

“Oh, honestly, I just draw this for fun. I don’t know much about space, really. But if you ever want to tell me about it, I’d love to learn!” She smiled.

“Well, for starters,” Danika said. Ilona stopped walking and leaned in. “It’s physically impossible for a starship to actually reach the stars. They’re too far away. Also, stars have existed for much longer than the invention of the candle.”

“Dani insists that starships don’t work, but I don’t think I believe them,” Ilona said, looking up at Astraea.

Astraea shrugged. “Who am I to be the judge of what people believe? But I will say, Dani—mind if I call you that?” At Danika’s nod, she continued. “Sometimes, I find that believing in the impossible makes doing what’s possible feel a little bit easier.”

But that was seven years ago, and Danika wondered if Astraea would say the same thing now. Maybe she’d figured out by now that more often than not, believing in the impossible just made everything hurt a whole lot more when it didn’t end up working.

Danika took Ilona to the inland junkyard anyway. As reward for fixing Earl the shop keeper’s broken ceiling fan, Danika was given free rein in the scrapyard. They dove into piles of rusting cars and old engines and emerged hours later with sheets of aluminum, circuit boards, and a sputtering engine.

“What are you two needin’ a whole engine for?” Earl asked, his bushy white eyebrows knitting together.

Ilona grinned. Sheet metal spilled from her arms and left sticky oil spots on her purple jumpsuit. “We’re building a ro—”

“Rolling cart,” Danika interrupted, moving towards the doorway. Their face flushed pink, and they looked away from Earl. “That, uh, moves on its own.”

Ilona followed Danika outside without another word, but her face squeezed itself into the puckered expression that always accompanied confusion. Usually, it surfaced when Danika tried to explain the mechanical details of their latest project, or when Ilona accidentally bit into a lemon thinking it was a grapefruit.

“Why did you lie to him?” Ilona asked.

“Because,” Danika said, their mind fumbling for an explanation.

Because they won’t understand. Because if we fail, I’ll have disappointed more people than just Ilona.

“Because we should keep it a secret,” they finished. They pressed their lips into what they hoped was a convincing smile. “Then it will be a surprise when we come back one day with Astraea.”

Because if we tell people, it becomes more real.

Astraea’s smile flashed through Danika’s head.

Because if we tell people, I’ll have to believe it.

---

When Danika was fourteen, they attempted to build a working pair of wings. The metal feathers glinted in the sun and pressed cool against Danika’s shoulder blades.

Danika climbed to the top of a ladder and stood above the world. They drank in the crisp morning air and the first rays of sunshine. They spread their wings and took a step onto the sky.

The wind sliced at their skin as it hit their face but failed to catch their wings.

Danika broke their arm.

Emergency rooms made Ilona wide-eyed and anxious. So Astraea sat by Danika’s stiff white bed instead, holding one hand while Danika’s mother held the other.

“The wings didn’t work,” Danika whispered as the anesthesia mask slipped over their mouth.

Astraea slipped them a smile—the warm, gentle one that curved her dark brown eyes into crescent moons and dimpled her cheeks. “You know, Dani…sometimes, in order to fly, you have to fall first.”

The wings never ended up working, but Danika crafted a bird of tin that flitted around just a few weeks later. Eventually, it would soar in the strongest of breezes.

---

Danika woke up with a twisting in their gut and the fading memory of Astraea’s smile. They looked at the rocket ship’s blueprints, scattered on their desk.

I have a feeling, Astraea, that when—if?—this rocket falls, its impact will hit Ilona so hard she won’t be able to get back up.

“You know,” Ilona remarked one evening, seated in the small skeleton of the starship, on the vintage recliner that served as the copilot seat. Danika sat next to her in a plaid version of the chair, their hand linked with Ilona’s across the spread of buttons dividing the seats. “Astraea would have loved this. Making something original, like she always tries to be…” Ilona trailed off.

For a brief moment, Danika glimpsed the pain that flickered in her eyes, masked by blinding optimism and dreams.

“I know.” Danika glanced at Ilona. “Hopefully she’ll see it, too, but…if…”

How could they remind their girlfriend of reality without crushing her spirit? How could they tether her to the ground when her head and heart already flew so high above the clouds?

Ilona met Danika’s eyes. “We’re going to find her.” Her smile became sunlight once again, only Danika knew the sun could never truly touch the stars. “We have to.”

Perhaps it was Ilona’s burning intensity that made it impossible to look away from her that finally convinced Danika. Maybe it stemmed from a secret seed of longing for a false sister they didn’t feel qualified to mourn. Either way, Danika’s heart thrummed with newfound hope.

They carried this hope with them in the weeks leading up to launch day. The starship proved steerable across Danika’s backyard. It withstood a wind storm peppered with rough rain and the multiple heat-resistant tests Danika had conducted with minor dents.

It looked as though it might actually work.

On launch day, Danika took their seat in the starship with trembling hands. Maybe everything will be okay. Danika drew a deep breath. When they exhaled, they tried to leave behind their worries and what-ifs and potential disappointment.

Maybe they could make it to the stars and back after all.

They looked at Ilona and a soft smile crossed their face. Their heart swelled.

Ilona’s brown eyes shone as she stared through the starship’s wide glass windshield, the gloaming sky distorted by the rippling glass. She practically radiated hope, bright and warm and determined.

She caught Danika looking and smiled. Ilona’s eyes crinkled into crescent moons and her cheeks dimpled. It felt like receiving a hug.

It reminded Danika of Astraea.

Do it for her, Danika thought to themself, as though they needed a reminder.

They activated the powder candle. With a throom! the starship roared to life: buttons blinked, the vessel vibrated with a sudden rush of energy. Ilona gripped her heavy safety straps. Danika clenched one hand around the steer stick, using the other to push the system of buttons programmed to launch the starship up and away, lifting into a world of infinite cosmos and dead sisters.

“We’re coming, Astraea,” Ilona whispered.

The liftoff sequence activated, initiating an automated countdown. Danika’s heart leapt into their throat.

Launching in three.

Their pulse pounded in their ears.

Two.

They wished Astraea was here.

One.

The starship did not move.

Danika choked on their next breath.

They looked out the windshield as the engines started to sputter out.

No.

A short word, but so powerful; it rattled their very being. It became their mantra as Ilona’s smile slipped behind clouds, then heavy rain. Danika did everything they could to make the starship work. But then—why did Astraea still glint so far above the rest of the world?

Danika punched in buttons, tried everything again. Over and over, for Astraea—

For Ilona, now grappling with the sudden onslaught of grief Danika had tried so hard to save her from.

“We can’t get to the stars,” she breathed, and she started to sob.

“I know,” Danika mumbled. It felt a bit like their lungs weren’t working. Had it always been this hard to breathe? And then tears were slipping down their face, silvery and moonlit, everything they had failed to reach.

“We failed her.” Ilona’s voice rose. She stumbled out of the starship and stalked towards Danika’s house. Danika followed her. “I am never going to see my sister again! Why?” Her last word became a scream: an explosion of sadness, of heartbreak, twisted into a raw, ugly anger.

When Danika reached Ilona, their girlfriend collapsed into their arms, grasping the folds of their shirt.

“I don’t know,” Danika mumbled into Ilona’s hair. “But I miss her, too.”

“I know,” Ilona whispered.

The two stood there, crying until their tears ran dry.

“I know.”

---

When Danika was seventeen, Astraea Argyros died.

They thought no other pain could feel like their wings were malfunctioning again, only this time, Danika fell from the sky instead of a tree. They thought no grief could ever replace that of this one, which dug an endless chasm in their heart and refused to ever let them bridge it.

They were wrong.

The only pain that could compare to losing someone once was to fall just short enough of the stars to lose them a second time.

But sometimes, the only way to fly was to fall first.

Months after the starship’s failure, the rocket-scorched field in Danika’s backyard finally grew back. The soft, new grass tickled Danika’s bare feet as they stood beside Ilona. The night sky stretched out around them, a canvas of colors that sparkled like amethysts and sodalite tied together with a ribbon of carnelian, the stars glittering with individual gemstones.

“Hey, Astraea?” Ilona spoke to the stars, her eyes shining with soft sunlight. “I just wanted to say that I love you. And that I miss you.”

“We both do,” Danika added.

A smile floated onto Ilona’s face as she leaned her head on Danika’s shoulder.