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‘OK, can anyone tell me what any of these constellations are?’ The young astronomer, a postgrad from the University of Hawaii earning some extra money, waved a hand at the sky above them.
Immediately Celeste pointed north. ‘The Great Bear and the two pointer stars pointing to Polaris, the Pole Star. Then over there...’ She wheeled her arm around and proceeded to identify several more constellations.
‘Great!’ enthused their guide. ‘Want to come and give me a hand?’ he teased.
She laughed, shaking her head. ‘Sorry!’ she said.
‘No, don’t be! It’s great that you’re enthusiastic,’ he said, and then helped others in the group see what she had indicated.
Rafael spoke over Celeste’s shoulder. ‘You know the southern hemisphere constellations, too. Does that mean you’ve already been in that part of the world?’
But she didn’t answer him, and appeared not to have heard him. He found himself frowning again.
She is sensitive about it—why?
Did she have bad memories? Was that it? Had whatever it was that had happened to her to make her withdraw from men, from love and romance, to make her so protective of naive young women like Louise, occurred somewhere like Australia? Was that why she was so evasive?
He felt the questions running through his head as he turned his attention back to the stargazing. Celeste, he could see, was clearly rapt, and he was glad. He wanted her to enjoy things—wanted her to enjoy things with him...
He enjoyed seeing with her the secrets of the heavens revealed to them through the powerful lenses of the telescopes—the stellar nurseries, where stars were born; the twin beacons of a binary system, with their different visual spectra; and, best of all, the galaxies revealed not as the blurry points they looked like from earth, but as populous as the Milky Way, teeming with a billion stars.
‘To think that their light reaches us from so very, very far away!’ she murmured wonderingly to Rafael as he stood back to let another guest take his place at the telescope.
‘And from so very long ago,’ he answered. ‘Those stars have burnt out millennia ago, yet their light still reaches out to us. Their past becomes our present—’
She did not answer him. A shiver seemed to go through her. Rafael sensed it.
‘Cold?’ he asked. They were high up, on a terraced viewing platform cut into the side of the extinct volcanic peak that had formed the island long ago, and here the night air was cold, not balmy. They had been handed thick jackets to wear, to keep them warm as they stood under the stars.
Celeste did not answer him. It had not been the cold that had made her shiver. It had been the words he’d said.
‘Their past becomes our present—’
They echoed again in her head, changing as they did.
My past became my present...trapping me in my past...
She shook her head. No, she would no longer let the past reach out to her. She would no longer let it isolate her, keep her away from what she knew, with every passing day, she wanted so much!
Rafael—Rafael to hold and be embraced by! Rafael to take her from the past, to set her free into a present that she wanted to embrace wholly and fully! Rafael to cradle her in his strong arms, kiss her with his warm lips...desire her with his body...
And she would let it happen! She would make herself anew—just like the continents and the islands did—leaving their past far, far behind.
She felt Rafael’s warm, strong arm come around her shoulder, drawing her close to him against the chill of the starlit night. Her head tilted slightly, resting on his shoulder. His arm tightened around her. She pulled her gaze away from the distant stars and looked up into Rafael’s eyes. He was looking down at her. His gaze was warm, and very close. And it glowed with a light that was only in the present, only in the time that was now.
