It was a new moon night, and without its light, stars appeared in even greater splendor as cast across seaside sky that mirrored on the ebb tide as oceans rose to moon in day on far side of the world.
The low waters rose in undulations, breaking on the rocky shore, and from table overlooking, they rested taking in sights and sounds.
On table, she shuffled and played with a deck of cards with faces he did not know. She shuffled, dealt a hand, then gathered back the cards. She shuffled twice more, turning over new hand with each, and he watched; observing and saying nothing. After this, she gathered the deck and placed it back away.
As night lived further, vestige of Perseids’ season sky-fall shone green and blue and white in celestial rain over town as stars displaced from high in Universe to splendor-burn into oblivion and absorption into air of the world.
Still, they rested, speaking little; simply being, but then came point when he wished to speak; and so he did.
“I enjoy what you share,” he told. “I enjoy what you put in the world even when I do not understand how it works for you. I think on what you share across the periods to which you speak, considering what they may mean to you and the audience that reads.
I wonder, too, whether when you write—or become medium for the message—if the messages speak to you personally, or if all for an outward audience.
If personal, I wonder what you’ve worked through: trials, changes, and achievements. I wonder on what meant temporary holdings are you learning to let free; what’s held, and what’s lost, its purpose? What do you endure? What immediacies and short-terms do you tackle, setting conditions for a greater long-range?
What endings are living? What beginnings do you perceive?”
He paused, returning gaze from her and back into the stars as if, in them, an answer would be found. But he found none.
He ended, “Whatever it is, I enjoy how it lends to thought.”
He wondered but asked no more. He was content to have said and spoken the questions accepting no response was due, and if one was wished returned: it would be, simple as that.
He was content to be among the quiet wonder of new moon night and contemplations that might never attain a knowing. There was a magic in that too.
Not every question needs an answer. More often, the question—asked and spoken—is enough.
Above, in new moon sky of infinite open depths, Milky way streaked vertical in illumination-shadow, and legends of the Cosmos told in stars, saved and recorded further in lore and legend of human histories. Another star fell, burning green in streak from high to low, melting into nothingness—stardust on the wind.