Endless Wonder

Olivia sits down next to Narina, tipping her head back to look at the sky. The stars glimmer above them, cold and distant in their perches in the sky. “I love looking at the stars,” says Olivia softly. “They make me remember how big the galaxy truly is. All those stars, all those worlds, all of them waiting for us to discover them. We think we know so much about our universe, when in reality we have only explored a tiny, tiny fraction. There could be anything out there. There could be things we haven’t even imagined.” “I know,” says Narina, letting her gaze drift lazily up as well. “My favourite pastime as a child was using my father’s telescope to look up at the stars. They always make me realise how small we are; how insignificant. We are merely a society of tiny creatures on a small lump of rock, spinning around a ball of fire at the edge of one galaxy out of millions. We think we are so special, when in reality we are nothing but a blip on the radar of the universe.” Olivia lets ou...

They say that every little girl grows up dreaming about her future wedding. I know I don’t have to mention how wildly inaccurate that statement is, or how offensively it reinforces patriarchal gender roles; but looking past all that, I confess that after a lifetime of not giving the notion of future matrimony the slightest second of thought, I have recently started thinking about what my perfect wedding would look like. It would be something like this: An ivory-sand beach with a gently-whispering turquoise sea lapping at the shore, a perfectly-cloudless azure sky stretching infinitely above. We are somewhere warm, tropical, but not too hot; there is a fresh breeze ruffling the leaves of the verdant palm trees lining the beach, picking up waves in that beautifully clear ocean and making their crests sparkle like diamonds in the blinding afternoon sun. The place is rural, deserted but for a dazzling white marquee sitting a few metres from the water’s edge. Music is playing, its soft mel...