by Bianca Mediatrix

This year’s Fictory is for a cause. We donate P100 to a chosen beneficiary for every fic submitted this July. Participate here if you can. Enjoy this one!

Prompt: He had waited 20 years to return it.

Once upon a time, there lived a God of the Sky and his young daughter—the girl in the sky. Her days were filled with jumping from one cloud to the next.  Every day, she painted on her sky canvas and decorated its vastness with carefully placed stars, clouds, moon and sun.

One day, while she was busy whipping up clouds for the night sky, she heard a little boy crying. Why is he sad? She wondered. She moved to the lowest cloud she could find to get a closer look at the boy in hopes of getting a clue on why he was crying.  But his eyes were just filled with more tears and nothing escaped his mouth but sobs.

I wish I could help him, she thought. She looked around for anything she could use to console the crying boy. Aha, a star! She plucked the brightest star from her night sky and sent it down the lonely boy with a little note that said: 

“For the lonely boy, 

Stop crying. I hope this makes you feel better.  

From the girl in the sky.”

As she had hoped, the boy had stopped crying and his eyes widened with amazement and wonder as he reached for the star. Upon reading the note, the boy looked up in the sky and searched for the mysterious star sender.  There she is!  

He wiped his tears away and began scribbling down a note of his own. He messily folded the letter into a paper crane and swung his hand towards the sky as strong as he could and blew the paper crane as hard as he could to make the letter reach the girl in the sky.

“To the girl in the sky, 

Do you wanna come down and play with me? Can we be friends?

From the lonely boy”

The girl squealed in excitement. She had never had a friend before. The girl happily skipped to her father to ask permission to go down to meet her new friend.

“Ho ho ho. My sweet child, lonely little boys just push you and hurt you and make you cry. Stay up here—we have a very important job of painting the sky,” her father said.  

She sadly returned to the lowest cloud she could find, and told the boy she was not allowed to go down because “boys just push you and hurt you and make you cry. Stay up here and paint the sky.”

“But I won’t push you or hurt you or make you cry. Friends don’t do that to each other!” he denied. “No matter.  If you can’t go down here, I’ll grow up and work hard to go to the sky!” he declared.

Every day after that night, the girl in the sky hung from the lowest cloud and watched the boy play and work. In an attempt to impress her, the boy would do silly things like cannonball into the river or cartwheel and tumble and fall in the end. She laughed at all his silliness, and he smiled to her delight.  

“Why were you crying?” she asked one day.

“Because I don’t have a home,” he nonchalantly replied. 

“You don’t have a house?!” she exclaimed.

“No, silly,” he laughed and scribbled another letter folded into a paper crane before he headed home. 

“To the girl in the sky, 

A home isn’t just a place where you live. It’s a place where you belong. One day, I’ll be a pilot and I’ll fly all over the world to look for a home. And I can always visit you in the sky!

From the only-slightly-lonely boy”

The boy continued to write her letters in paper cranes weekly. On the day of the week she had received a paper crane, the girl from the sky painted the sky exceptionally beautiful in response to his letter.  

Years came and went by and on the thousandth paper crane, he wrote

“To the girl in the sky, 

Tomorrow, my dreams come true—I’ll become a pilot and I’ll be able to fly around the world. But I don’t have to find a home anymore because I built a home in you. I hope this time, you can be by my side as my dream comes true

Love, 

The once lonely boy”

Moved by his dedication and commitment, the God of the Sky granted them their hearts’ desires and granted her permission to finally meet the boy. Upon meeting, he gave her a ring made from the star she plucked from when he was a lonely boy. He had waited 20 years to return it.  

The next day, the girl from the sky stayed by his side as he was inducted to be a pilot. They hopped on a plane and flew off into the sky, but not searching for a home because they had already built somewhere they belonged. 

From then on, as a testament to their everlasting love, every time one makes a thousand paper cranes, and wishes on the brightest star, the God of the Sky grants them their heart’s purest desire. ☁️

Bianca Mediatrix is a speech therapist by day and a professional overthinker by night. She is a lover of coming-of-age-stories, Japanese culture, animated films and the color yellow.