A/N: Hi! It’s been a while. This little snippet was directly inspired by the song “Still” by Foo Fighters, some of the lyrics of which I’ve included. The characters you see here were part of a series that I was doing but abandoned – I have all these wonderful people sitting round with no plot to use them in, so I hope you like them. This will be unashamedly sappy, I admit, but in spite of that, enjoy!

This (at least the first bit, anyway) is dedicated to Douglas, with much affection.

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Stargazing

…Follow me into the trees,

I will lead the way…

…Laying quiet in the grass,

Everything is still…

The summer night was indeed still out in the field. The small wind that rustled through the trees surrounding the open land had a slight bite to it, but that did not concern the two people that lay intertwined in the long grass, both staring into the sky. They’d taken off to the country for the weekend, both of them needing to get away from the school that consumed their whole lives. Although they were not far from the nearest village and their car was waiting on the nearby dirt road, they may as well have run away to the middle of nowhere. Neither of them had yet fully explored their new homeland, a country so close but yet so foreign to them both, she from the urban south, and he from the rural west. They were close to the highland border and they could see small mountains in the distance, but for now their attention was focused purely straight up into space.

‘I haven’t left the cities in such a long time,’ the girl said, breaking the long but not awkward silence. ‘My parents were never ones for the country.’

‘I grew up in it,’ replied the boy, ‘but it wasn’t like this. Rolling green hills and valleys, mostly grey skies, stone walls everywhere. Plus the bloody sheep.’

The girl looked at him with a mischievous smile. ‘So, is it true what they say about Welshmen?’

The boy laughed and playfully cuffed her arm. ‘Perdy!’

‘Come on, Ade. You love me.’

‘I know.’ Adrian held Perdita closer. ‘I do.’

Perdita nestled into Adrian’s chest. Truthfully, he was getting rather uncomfortable on the hard ground but he didn’t mind. Her gaze never left the stars.

‘I haven’t been out in such a clear night for a long time. I think Col took me last time. You can never see the stars in the city; everything else is in the way. I had forgotten how beautiful they were.’ She pointed to three random stars. ‘I think that’s Taurus, but I’m not sure.’ She pointed to a bright star slowly moving west. ‘That’s Venus, the Evenstar. But I don’t know any others,’ she said, almost sadly.

‘Um…’ was all Adrian could say. He suddenly pointed. ‘Look, there’s a satellite!’

‘Where? Oh, yeah! Wow, I had no idea you could see them with the naked eye. That’s awesome. To see something moving across the sky thousands of miles in front of you but still thousands of miles in front of the thing you were looking at in the first place… makes you feel pretty insignificant. To be on one world out of millions of billions in the universe, the one world that we know is capable of supporting life, purely evolved just by chance, culminating in mankind, maybe the top of the food chain but maybe an evolutionary accident, capable of such beauty but of such destruction…’ Perdita trailed off her stream of consciousness. She looked up at Adrian. ‘Am I making sense?’

Adrian smiled. ‘No. I’m an artist, I don’t understand you science people, with your evolution and your elements and your other stuff that makes my head hurt.’

‘Hey, I’m an artist too. Why do science and art have to be mutually exclusive?’

‘It’s the rules.’

Perdita shook her head. He could be so obtuse sometimes. She looked back at the stars, hypnotised by them. ‘Do you know any stars?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Sure. Know them well.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ He started pointing randomly. ‘There’s Dave and Simon, I met them at an awesome party in London, there’s Noel, went to school with him, there’s Marty, Pete and Arthur…’

‘Adrian Davies, are you mocking me?’

‘Yes.’

Perdita laughed and kissed him. ‘Cheeky sod. And besides, why are the stars all boys?’

‘They’re not. There’s Tricia, and Sarah, and all the other girls. Of course, my favourite is right here with me.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Perdita. ‘Well, it is rather hard to cuddle a dense ball of heated gas or rock or whatever they’re made of.’

‘It is.’

Perdita squinted. The sky was a little fuzzy without her glasses, but of course the distances were so remote her glasses couldn’t help her anyway.

‘Is that a shooting star?’

‘Where?’

‘Over by Dave,’ she said only with the tiniest hint of sarcasm.

‘Oh, right! Aren’t we supposed to make a wish?’

‘I don’t know, are we?’

‘Not sure, never seen one before. But let’s do it anyway, before it goes away.’

‘Right.’

They both closed their eyes and made their respective wishes as the star finally fell out of the sky with a fiery streak. Then they lay silent again, for what seemed an age, just content to be together under the canopy nature provided. The stars turned and mixed together slowly as the night was wearing on. Perdita was almost starting to fall asleep, amidst the familiar warmth and smell of the man with his arms wrapped around her, his cheek rested on her dark hair. Her arm was flung across his chest, their legs twined together. Perdita couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this close to Adrian, even though they had assumed this position many times before. His work had occupied his thoughts lately. She didn’t know how he did it. The strings of words and letters and symbols he carefully deciphered looked like absolute gibberish to her, whether it was a long dead script of ancient times or his own native tongue, whose sound she found beautiful but the written words incomprehensible. She was so proud of him, doing what he loved and learning all he could, something she could never do but was expected to by her own parents. She was glad that he didn’t care that he, a boy from the country, was a brilliant linguist and she, born to academic parents and given the finest education available, worked in a supermarket of her own volition.

Perdita was on the verge of sleep. She stirred as Adrian tightened his grip on her again.

‘Were you falling asleep?’ he asked softly. She nodded.

He stroked her hair. ‘So, what did you wish for?’

‘I thought you weren’t meant to tell, otherwise it wouldn’t come true.’

‘Well, yes, but you’re not the superstitious type, are you?’

‘Definitely not. Besides, I don’t even remember what it was. More Hobnobs or something.’

Adrian grinned. ‘That’s so you. Us on a romantic weekend away from all our friends and family and from uni, in the middle of the Scottish woodlands in an unusually dry summer, and all you’re thinking about is Hobnobs.’

‘And Irn-Bru.’

‘Of course.’

More silence passed. Adrian was still playing with Perdita’s hair. She loved it when he did that.

‘Do you want to know what I wished for?’ Something almost indiscernible crept into his voice as he said it. His hands shook slightly, but Perdita was so sleepy and relaxed she noticed nothing. She was barely listening.

‘What did you wish for, my love?’

‘I wished…’ His throat was tight and dry. He had to struggle to speak. ‘I wished that you would marry me.’

Perdita froze. She was wide awake now. Adrian instantly felt her stiffen in his arms. An immediate thought rushed to his head. Oh God, what have I done? It was only a few seconds that Perdita lay there unmoving but it felt an eternity. She started to shake.

She raised herself on her hands and looked at Adrian. His eyes had adjusted and he could see perfectly in the dim starlight and moonlight. Perdita was crying, her face expressionless. Adrian thought that this had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

‘Perdy…’

His heart skipped a beat when she finally broke out into a grin. Her sobs became laughs.

‘Don’t say anything,’ she whispered.

She suddenly kissed him with a passion and a lust that was completely new to Adrian, her lips salty from tears. Adrian was so surprised he forgot to breathe. They held on to each other so tight they could barely move, completely intertwined. Nothing else mattered to them except each other. They were each other’s world, each other’s universe. The only thing they wanted, the only thing they needed, was one another. Nothing needed to be said. They were one in every way.

This is so her, Adrian thought as they lay together, still locked in their embrace. She’s never been one for words.

They stayed out in the field all night, far from anyone. They needed nothing else.

…There we’ll make a final wish,

Just before the fall…

…Promise I will be forever yours,

Promise not to say another word…