I step outside into a city-leavened, violet night. In case you’re not familiar, the city lends an odd orange hue to the sky, lights it up unnaturally, sometimes. But tonight it’s not so bad. For stars in this part of town, this is as good as it gets. The wind is freezing and it’s late; I’d already nuzzled into the comfort of my bed this evening, but a little brain spark had reminded me to check for a clear sky. After a spate of cloudy, rainy days, I’m hungry. I tug my dressing gown tight around me against the winter chill and head to the balcony.
It is worth it.
I lean backwards over the low wall to get the broadest possible vista, breaking every health and safety injunction, and look up. A handful of bright pins flung wide across that blueish canvas, peppering our giant shared dome. Few, really, but those that are there shine bright. It’s survival of the fittest, where city lights and the full megawatt power of the industrialised world are turned pugilant on the sky.
Those who cut through the smog and the lightened air are the ones that shine most boldly and resolute.
Ursa Major sits serene, almost directly above my head. Spotted first, it immediately provides a sense of order and comfort. It’s a constellation I have known since childhood. And it’s immense. For the first time, tonight, and since I’ve been looking at star charts, I can pick out the double pinpricks of the great bear’s paws. Excitement.
Auriga to my right, a daisy-chained hexagon led by its brightest star, Capella. He is a charioteer, though I have no idea how this came to be. A flatted hexagon, large, simple; an irregularity or two with stars that don’t quite fit the pattern, but you’d not miss it if you looked for a clear six-sided shape up in the heavens.
Beneath it also, and for the first time, I see the twin head-stars of Gemini: Castor and Pollux. I can’t see their bodies, though; they’re just floating, disembodied shining heads.
Next? I gaze on. Orion the hunter, one of the easiest constellations to spot thanks to his iconic three-starred belt, is nowhere to be seen. I think he draws his bow somewhere beneath the lightline.
I look for something new. Using an app to locate constellations makes me feel a little impure, but it’s so valuable. It draws another prominent constellation for me, sprawled wide below Ursa Major, nearly as wide as the bear: a lion.
Leo. I want to be wrong. But I’ve a knack for these things, and rarely am. I’m surprised by its size; it dominates the space below the bear’s paws, a sphynx recumbent, lazy and self-confident. Resting in power.
Its story is not a pleasant one. The Nemoan lion, apparently, was murdered by the hero Hercules in one of his mandated Twelve Labours. (N.B. don’t ever trust someone who describes themself as a hero.) Hercules then chucked the poor beast up into the sky, where it would stay forever as a memorial to the greatness of the ‘hero’, or something. He is, of course, up there in starry glory himself too. What a dick.
To be fair to Hercules, the lion was, so it is said, a man-eater. The murder of a murderer. Protecting some people from future murder by this hungry lion. But animals are animals, and generally avoid doing things that have no immediate benefit to them; I’d imagine this lion only ate people when it was hungry, for food.
Leo, this poor creature brutalised by the Greek, is pretty cool to me, painted up there in bright silver and diamond.
I’ve been trying not to think about the man I was dating last February. He too lay there comfortable recumbent, deeply seated in upper class power. I’d never gone out with someone called Leo. I’d been excited. Not any more.
—
I shiver and head indoors. The memory’s mercifully excised. I sleep a sleep full of stars.
