The Sea Of Stars

Sail through the cosmos in tonight's fantasy bedtime story.

Sleep and Sorcery is a folklore and fantasy inspired sleep series.

My name is Laurel and I'll be your guide on tonight's fantastical journey.

Sleep and Sorcery is one part bedtime story,

One part guided meditation,

And one part dreamy adventure.

If you're still awake at the end of the story,

I'll guide you through a relaxing meditation and body scan.

In tonight's story,

You are a celestial being,

A caretaker to the cosmos.

On your nightly sojourn through the stars,

You visit the various constellations,

Performing tune-ups where necessary.

When your work is done,

And dawn nips at your heels,

You return to your cozy nebula to rest until you're needed again.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.

Walt Whitman,

Leaves of Grass.

The night is here again,

And so begins your work.

Or it will,

When you can pull yourself from the coziness of sleep.

Your eyes are still closed,

Trying to seal in the sweet dreams visited upon you.

But the stars are shining in,

Bright behind your eyelids.

When you open them at last,

Your vision is hazy and gold,

Drinking in the dazzling lights of your abode in the deep nest of a star's belly.

Very well,

You suppose.

Now is as good a time as any to rise and make your way through the sea of stars.

Your blanket of stardust unfurls as you roll from the bed and stretch your arms.

A silent yawn swells through you,

Time to get dressed.

You drape yourself in a robe of fine sparkling silk spun from strands of milky way.

It shimmers like moondusted snow on the fine earth far,

Far below you.

And it is softer than a lullaby against your skin.

You slide down a spiral of starlight to the harbour where your boat bobs in waiting.

Its silver sail gleams and billows lightly.

The small sailboat in which you nightly sweep across the sky rocks gently as you step within,

Sending platinum ripples outward.

Your tiny tool kit is stowed safely in the hull.

This you open as a force of habit,

Ensuring all your gadgets and instruments are in order.

Then,

Untethering the boat,

You push off from the illuminated harbour into the endless expanse of dark sky.

Smoothly,

The cosmic winds tussle your hair and catch the silver sail of the vessel as it drifts on,

Picked up by momentum.

You cast your eyes back whence you came,

The nebula in which you reside.

This is one of your favourite vistas,

Home from afar.

For in the midst of dust and star material,

You don't see the whole picture.

It's only as you pull away that you can grasp the shape and awe-inspiring beauty of the place,

The several trunks of interstellar clouds and dust that rise from nothing,

Shifting and displacing in a great expansive dance.

The further away you move,

The more they resemble the fingers of a giant hand,

Held in an expression of grace that's in the tip of the smallest finger that you've made your home,

From which you now depart.

You consider this existence a great privilege.

The whole of the universe is,

For you,

Within reach,

And great swaths of space make for a wonderful playground.

Without you,

The caretaker to the cosmos,

The constellations might fall out of tune and alignment,

Drifting aimlessly in the empty sky,

Their music atonal and cacophonous.

You keep them bound and tuned so that they remain in cosmic harmony.

You are part technician,

Having mastery of tools no one else understands,

And part artist,

Composer of celestial symphonies and stellar tableau.

Often as you glide in your boat across the heavens,

You think of how you might appear to the small observers on the earth's surface.

Should one of them be looking your way tonight,

Even without the aid of a telescope,

She might glimpse you,

Sudden as a flash,

Like a shooting star across her eyeline.

Certainly,

There are countless other planets in the galaxy and beyond,

But only on that little blue oasis is there such skyward imagining since the first humans walked its surface.

They've turned their gaze toward the night sky,

Naming the stars and playing connect the dots with the heavenly bodies.

They cast their myths and gods into space,

And the stars sweetly agreed to hold their shape,

Immortalizing mankind's tales.

Even stars,

You see,

Have longing,

And they love to be admired as heroes,

Queens,

And magical beasts.

As humans evolved,

Becoming increasingly interconnected,

Even taking ships on the ocean,

Still they trusted the stars to play their maps.

They navigated by the shapes and angles,

Memorizing the seasonal patterns and rotations,

Always using those stars as a beacon to safe anchorage.

Even now,

When they hardly need the constellations anymore for navigation or to recognize the changing seasons,

You work hard to maintain the night sky,

If only to stir mankind's poetic and mythological yearnings.

Shining bright ahead as you splash through milky pools of stardust is the constellation Lyra,

Named so for the lyre of Orpheus,

Mythology's most gifted bard.

It was said that his music could make the very rocks and trees take to dancing,

That the animals,

Even the most ferocious lions and bears,

Lay down at his feet to listen to the sweetness of his song.

When his music turned sad,

All the animals and rocks and trees wept with him.

In your eyes,

Lyra is the most important constellation in the sky.

From her strings begin the music of the spheres.

Her vibrations ripple outward,

Expanding to hold every corner of the universe in euphony.

On your approach tonight,

It's clear that she's in need of some upkeep.

For though you can hear and feel within you the pleasant oscillations of her music,

It does not ring with perfect harmony as it should.

Perhaps a string on the cosmic harp is out of tune.

Lyra's stars blink and twinkle in greeting as you sweep near,

Stepping from your boat onto a cloud of star stuff.

It's worse than you thought.

The strings are not out of tune after all,

But one of them appears to have snapped and dangles lifelessly now in the void.

Poor old harp,

You utter soothingly.

You've come unstrung,

But this is no calamity,

You think,

And it's good you've come along to help.

You consult your box of tools for something to mend the broken string.

But on closer inspection,

You deduce that it must be cut completely,

And a new harp string made to replace it.

With a little sigh,

You grasp your shears and cut it at the base of the lyre.

As the scissors close,

You think vaguely of the fates in mankind's mythology,

With their dominion over the threads of destiny.

Instead of letting the broken string tumble gracefully into darkness though,

You wind it up in a neat coil and tuck it inside your toolbox.

It may come in handy somewhere else,

And if not,

You can add it to your collection of starry oddities.

Now,

To the making of a new string for the harp,

This requires some thought and more than a little ingenuity.

You cast your eyes across the heavens,

Willing a solution to present itself.

If only there were a spinner among the stars,

You could pluck a hair from the tail of Pegasus.

But oh,

Now it comes to you.

Deep ahead,

There shine the three equidistant stars that make up the belt of Orion,

The hunter.

You can see his form flicker in the blackness,

Arm flexed to draw back his bowstring,

But it's not the bowstring that lights up your eyes.

If you squint and tilt your head to the side,

You can see the constellation's other forms.

For every cluster of stars,

As many possible shapes,

It has borne many names in the minds of mankind.

To the Norse people in their longships,

This cluster did not depict the belt of Orion,

But the distaff of Frigg.

She was their great goddess of prophecy,

Motherhood,

And magic,

And she was often seen bearing or even riding a distaff,

A tool for spinning fiber.

Might you appeal to the stars in this aspect to help you spin a new string?

For Lyra,

What may seem a staggering distance between stars is but a small sweep for you in your elegant sailboat.

Soon you come to the feet of Orion,

Which by slanted eye becomes the threshold of Frigg's distaff.

You extend a ladder made of frozen moonbeams from the belly of your boat and make the climb to the three stars of the spinning tool.

You're pleased to find that a billow of rust-colored stardust already sits poised upon the distaff like a mass of wool,

No doubt shed by the supergiant star,

Betelgeuse.

How fortunate.

So imagining yourself as Frigg,

Goddess and weaver of destinies,

You spin the reddish dust,

Pulling and whirling at it until it spirals into a cohesive gleaming thread.

It stretches and strains,

But proves itself a strong and sturdy filament.

You wrap the length of string around your wrist until it nearly reaches your elbow.

Surely now it's long enough to take the place of the broken harp string.

So collapsing your ladder and sailing yet again to the base of the great lyre,

Whose stars are still winking merrily upon you,

You begin to repair the constellation,

Twining thoughtfully to secure the string at the base.

You grasp the other end and climb your ladder to its crown,

Here summoning all your strength.

You loop the string around its peg and pull it taut until you meet enough resistance.

You tie it off,

Straining against the opposing force,

And snip the excess.

This you stash for future use in the night sky,

Or perhaps for the fashioning of a belt of your own.

When at last you can safely let go,

You feel your shoulders fall and a great relieved sigh escape.

It worked.

Reaching down,

You pluck the new red string and feel your whole body resonate with the low vibrations of the music.

A few turns of the peg ensure that the string reaches its proper tuning.

You pluck it again,

Then strum all the strings in a glissando which ripples out across the universe in pleasing harmonics.

The sound of it creating waves along the sea of stars relaxes your face into a satisfied smile.

In fact,

You feel the tremulous oscillations relax you throughout body and soul.

The crown of your head softens.

Your face,

Your neck,

Your shoulders dropping down your back under the weightlessness of Milky Way silk.

You relax deeply in the chest,

Your heart ringing and opening to the sweetness of the sound.

You feel release in your belly,

Pelvis and hips,

In your legs,

And your feet which rest so delicately on the rungs of the moonbeam ladder.

But the music goes beyond you,

Beyond even the solar system.

You can feel the trembling of the galaxy's spirals as they unfurl just as you open,

Unfolding to the ringing notes.

So does the whole cosmos.

Lyra's brightest star blinks its thanks as your boat departs.

Off to continue your nightly ride,

You sail on past Hercules,

Grasping his great club,

Foot poised on the head of the dragon,

Draco.

You make your way through a great celestial menagerie,

Cygnus the swan,

Delphinus the dolphin,

And Vopecula the wolf skate by your sail.

You splash through a whole mythological family tree,

Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus overlook their daughter Andromeda.

Beyond is the great hero Perseus,

The shield-bearing slayer of Medusa and Andromeda's husband.

Then your sail catches a cosmic breeze and shifts direction.

You turn the sail to move smoothly onward.

Little meteorite you are,

Falling across the endless sky.

Straight ahead are the two bears,

Ursa's major and minor.

You smile,

Happy that the starry winds of fate see fit to blow you their way.

The mother and the cub always take good care of themselves,

So it's been a while since you visited.

Polaris,

The north star which has led so many earthling wanderers home,

Or lit the way to great discoveries,

Now guides the boat toward your friends.

What so few really know,

However,

Is that Polaris is not a single star,

But a grouping of three celestial bodies which appear as a unified spark in the darkness.

The closer you draw,

The more they separate to your vision,

Drifting apart the way a single object,

When brought very close to the eyes,

Seems to bisect into two.

At the center of the system is the yellow supergiant.

Two companion stars revolve in an orbital ballet,

But something is amiss,

You realize.

The smallest of the stars in that tightly bound Polaris system is sagging slightly,

Spinning like a top that's lost momentum.

It's in danger of falling out of orbit,

You realize.

And then,

What good would the north star be to those looking up from below?

Thinking quickly,

You cast open your toolbox.

Yes,

The broken string of Lyra will come in handy this evening.

You're so glad you held on to it.

You retrieve the harp string and swiftly form a loose knot and a large loop at its end.

There,

A rudimentary lasso,

Giving the string a mighty twirl,

You loose it away,

Attempting to lasso the lazy star.

On the first few tries,

You fall short,

But at last,

And with a thrill,

You manage to swing it around the star's girth.

With a gathering of strength,

You pull the lasso tight against the star's inertia.

It resists,

Briefly,

Before giving way,

As if heaving a great sigh.

Easing into your guidance,

The star resumes its position in the delicate balance of Polaris.

Far below on the surface of the earth,

You imagine the north star sliding briefly out of focus,

Before burning brighter than ever to light someone's way.

Unbeknownst to you,

The two celestial bears have watched all this time in wonder and admiration.

Only now,

With the system restored,

Do you awaken to their gaze and look warmly upon them.

The little bear,

Ursa Minor,

Is playfully batting at meteorites,

While his mother,

Ursa Major,

Smiles with indulgence.

She is a beast of wondrous size and of terrific gentleness.

In the spaces between her stars,

An onlooker can see whole galaxies.

Even at this moment,

A meteor shower plays within the vacuum of her belly.

She is that capacious.

You've always revered the great bear for her position in the sky and her maternal magnitude.

Since it's been so long since your last visit,

You decide to leave them a little gift.

You present the mother with your crimson coil of stardust,

The excess thread woven from the stellar clouds of beetle juice,

A souvenir from a side of the sky they never see.

That's the gift you have.

Travel.

The ability to move fluidly throughout the cosmos,

Quite limitless in your reach and potential.

The stars are fixed,

At least in their patterns,

Holding sacred the distances between.

With only you as liaison between east,

West,

North and south,

This gives you a profound sense of responsibility and of gratitude for the stars.

They hold their patterns even as they rotate around the sky,

Giving way to greater forces.

And in doing so,

They give light,

Direction and hope to those who view them from afar.

It takes great strength and tenacity to stand still in the heart of a racing universe if every once in a while the stars need a little nudge to get back on course.

You are only too happy to help.

After a good catch up with the great bear and her little cub,

You return to your boat which lists calmly in the splashing sea of space.

The sail catches a cosmic wind and you move onward through the darkness.

You look back,

Marveling at the play of falling stars behind the shimmering outline of Ursa Major.

The rosy fingers of dawn are just becoming visible in the eastern sky.

Soon the sun will sweep across.

Your long night of lassoing stars,

Spinning cosmic threads and re-stringing constellations is nearly at an end.

You're proud of the work you've done and you feel the creep of exhaustion in your muscles from the effort.

Oh,

To sleep curled up beneath your blanket of stardust would be such a blessing.

So you let the boat and the invisible current take you on past a sea of bobbing planets and constellations.

You skate on the rings of Saturn and skim the many moons of Jupiter.

There is Leo,

The great lion,

Attended by a playful cub.

You spare a moment's blissful adoration of Centaurus,

The glistening starry expression of the centaur Chiron,

Who on earth trained the greatest heroes of the classical age.

The great heroes now scattered across the sky.

Heracles,

Perseus,

And so many more were his pupils.

You drift deeper into the dark sea as dawn eclipses the stars below.

The stars become sparser,

But they're light just as effervescent out here,

Nearing your home.

Soon the graceful fingers of the nebula bloom in your sightline.

You could never get enough of this view.

Even you,

Traveler of galactic channels and infinite waterways,

Rider of meteorites and tuner of stars,

Even you cannot shake the awe that overpowers you in the presence of sheer ancient beauty.

Soon it looms so large that the image loses focus and you are enveloped in shimmering plumes.

You dock your boat in the harbor,

Shaking the stardust from your hair.

It falls with a twinkle of incandescent chimes against the stair,

Ascending to your cozy home.

Here,

In the littlest finger of the nebula,

You remove your robes of milky way silk and change into sleeping garments woven from the softest threads of starlight.

Then you crawl beneath the blanket made of stardust,

Sinking softly against your pillows.

Another night will come soon enough and there will be work to do,

Stars to align,

But for now all you need to do is rest.

In fact,

That's the best thing you can do for the whole universe,

Curled up in your sweet space between the columns of stellar dust beyond the limits of solar systems.

You close your eyes,

You can still see the faint glow of starlight behind your eyelids,

But soon you embrace the healing nature of darkness,

Its cues to slow down and surrender to sleep.

You feel here and now,

Very small but also very important.

You are like light itself,

Able to travel long distances and change your shape,

Change your purpose,

To suit the needs of something bigger than you,

To serve others.

You are the waves that crest and fall within the sea of stars,

But you are also an individual,

One who feels love,

Devotion and commitment,

And one who deserves rest.

You sink deeper into your bed,

Deep in the belly of a star,

On the surface of the infinite.

Your dreams inspire several spirals down,

A little boat bobs in its cosmic harbor,

Softly swaying to the music of the starry sea,

And far,

Far away,

A harp is playing,

Its tender chords sending gentle vibrations across the universe.

It resonates in your body and in the hearts of those on earth too.

It connects you across fathomless distances of time and space.

It hums,

Tuned ever so delicately by your fingertips.

Soften deeply into place,

Let your body relax,

Letting the breath take you deeper,

Soften you more,

Take a few moments to gently empty your mind,

Allowing your awareness to soften,

Acknowledging and releasing any thoughts that drift into the forefront of your mind.

Remember that right now,

There's nothing you need to worry about,

Nothing you need to do except rest.

In fact,

It's the best thing you can do right now.

Breathe deeply,

Letting the breath slow down,

Deepening all the way into the belly.

Gently bring your awareness to the soles of the feet and imagine that your body,

Beginning there at the base,

Is slowly filling up with soft white starlight,

A fuzzy tingling cosmic light.

Allow it to pour into you,

Into the soles of the feet,

Filling up the toes,

Drifting up toward the ankles,

Filling up the lower legs with this warm white starlight.

Allow the sensation to continue up through the knees,

Into the upper legs,

Filling up the pelvis and hips with soft cosmic light,

Warmth and radiance.

Letting that sensation slowly fill the lower back,

The belly.

Breathe deeply and let this warm starlight fill the chest and the upper back,

Softly,

Sweetly.

Moving up to the shoulders,

This gentle radiant white starlight.

Let it move down the arms,

Into the elbows and through the forearms,

All the way to the fingertips,

As if it's being poured into you,

Creating warmth,

Light and radiance.

Allow it to move softly into your neck,

Filling up the head,

All the way to the crown of the head,

This warm white light,

Fuzzy and soft.

And allow it to shine brightly from the crown of your head,

From your fingertips and from your toes,

So you become like a star.

Feel your whole body softly radiating with this tender starlight.

Allow it to cleanse your mind and body of any tension or worry.

Embracing that your only purpose now is to rest,

Even as you shine.

Know that to care for others you have to start with caring for yourself,

Filling your own cup,

Being your own north star,

So that you can give back and guide others.

Breathe,

Softening,

Deepening.

You are made from the same stuff as the stars.

Every part of you was forged long ago in the belly of a star.

You travel in all your component parts,

Your inner elements,

On the limitless arc of light.

You are the universe.

You are infinite.

You are not separate from the cosmos,

But an essential part of it.

You are connected to every other living thing on earth and you are also deeply bound to the beyond,

To the twirling opus of the night sky,

To the myths and music immortalized in the stars.

Settle down under your blanket of stardust in your cozy cosmic hideaway,

Draped in milky way silk.

Breathe in the essence of the infinite,

Breathe out sweet dreams.