Explanation of the Stars

Dance across the watery sky
Twinkle forever in their eye
Chase around the northern pole
A fiery faerie trapped soul.

Billions of years ago there lived a faerie called Fiamma. Throughout her entire childhood, she had always hung her head in shame. The faeries were known for their beauty and grace, the most valued characteristics in their culture. Fiamma could claim neither beauty nor grace to her name, becoming a humiliation to her family.

Fiamma slowly disappeared. Her family saw little of her, and she took to spending her evenings away from her home, traveling to see the fires of a human settlement. There, she could feel at ease. She felt for the humans, who had neither the beauty nor grace of the faeries, just the same as she. She could never be with them though; the faeries were forbidden from birth to ever interact with the humans. But she was drawn to the fire; its licking fingers that could grasp and destroy anything it came to meet; a near uncontrollable force.
In the trance of thought that the fire inevitably led her into, she wandered too close to the camp. She was in the middle of thought, (Why is it so colorful?) when she realized how far she had gone from the safety and cover of the grasses and leaves. She snapped out of her state, moving quickly, but stumbling along her way back.

It was that small flit of color that caught Adam’s eye. It caught his eye, and held it. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Adam whispered from across the fire pit. Even with his words only a small wave through the air, they flashed and rang out in Technicolor before Fiamma’s eyes. I’m beautiful? She thought, speechless.

Adam could see her still. She had stopped dead in her tracks as soon as the sparkles danced before her eyes. Within moments, she was transformed; no longer was she a shamed and disgraced child. She had all of the beauty of the fire, and the grace to match its hands that reached towards the sky and waved in the wind.
She ran back to her home, glancing only once back at Adam who stood dumbstruck in the crackling light. All of the faeries stopped in awe, and the men dropped to their knees before her. Her family embraced her. Soon, she found that she had become the shining apple of everyone’s eye. The constant attention she received with her newly found beauty was tiring for Fiamma. She wished that she was unnoticeable again.

She could not handle it any longer. On a particularly hectic night, she left for the fire, knowing she was condemning herself for seeking out a human.
Adam found her. He could not miss the light gliding through the darkness among the leaves. “I love you,” he whispered to the face that he could not see.
“I love you too,” She whispered back to him, knowing he could never hear her small voice. She felt herself being lifted as high as any had ever gone, until Adam could see her only as a small twinkle in the sky. Soon he saw millions of other lights being lifted. All of the faeries who were seeking for her attention and beauty were following after her, as she had become the fire that inevitably attracted them to follow. They followed her even into the prison she had condemned herself to.

The rising lights positioned themselves around Fiamma. Every night as Adam looked into the sky he could see the lights moving in a slow dance. There was only one star that he never saw move, and he knew that it was the faerie Fiamma. She would never move again, looking back to earth straight on, seeking Adam, her condemning human love. Adam could walk towards her forever, and although he would never find himself to be lost, he would never find himself to be with her either. Still today men follow her in the darkness.


(Story from my geography class for African storytelling... I felt weird reading a love story in a group of all guys, so I'm just glad they didn't really seem to care that I didn't...)