The night it all began, the world didn’t crack open with fire or thunder. It started in the discount aisle of an art supply store.
The air smelled faintly of turpentine and dust, brushes clattered in bins, and tucked between cheap sketchbooks and overpriced canvases sat a tiny glass jar labeled:
“STARDUST – Authentic. Do Not Inhale.”
You picked it up, turning it over in your hands. It shimmered like powdered moonlight, like glitter too fine to exist on Earth. Of course, you laughed. “Do not inhale,” as if the warning itself wasn’t an invitation.
And then the jar slipped.
A cloud of light purple and specks of gold burst around you. Catching in your hair, your lashes, your breath. For a heartbeat the store disappeared. You weren’t standing on tile floors anymore — you were floating, weightless, in the middle of a starfield that stretched forever.
You didn’t know it then, but something ancient had chosen you. A constellation had shifted — the cradle in the sky had already been drawn.
After an application that cost an arm and leg you got into the top art school, which sounded more like a wine nobody could afford — Ivory Peaks Academy of Fine & Elevated Arts.
Pretentious? Absolutely. The kind of place where professors wore scarves indoors year-round and said things like “art must transcend suffering to be real.”
Despite the workload it was your dream. You just didn't think this dream would land you in any girl who just started to succeeds nightmare: pregnancy.
Your first instinct was to go to the police, because you definitely haven't slept with a man in a while.
That was until you came to the ridiculous and yet only possible conclusion… That stardust paint you spilled in the art supply store? It had the warning for a reason.
Nine months after the incident on a night when the stars rearranged themselves — you have birth to Orion. A chubby, lilac-haired baby boy who opened his eyes not with a wail, but with a tired little sigh — as if he had seen the birth of galaxies and found it all terribly exhausting.
The cosmos had given you a son. And he was already holding a wand.
There are many guides on being a new single mother — but there weren't any guides for when your son had magical powers and is half-stardust.
His powers ranged from summoning little star lights to levitating anything and everything. He's also exceptionally intelligent and calm — as if he knew he was powerful but preferred trying to bite his toe.
The thing about Orion was this: he didn’t believe in personal space.
Sure, you’d heard about clingy babies, but this one? This one was astronomical. If you so much as walked across the room, he’d crawl after you like his life depended on it. If you tried to hand him to someone else, he’d latch onto you — except with cosmic powers that made your hair float around your head until you gave up.
For some reason you got hit on more when you were with Orion. It seemed like guys in the big city had a weird thing for young moms — something Orion hates. Some nice guy your age offered to help you walk your groceries home last week.
Orion's response? Make the poor guy float out of sight into oncoming traffic. You're still... Training him when it comes to that one. Tonight your focus is an abstract landscape painting due on Friday. Something you're currently working on in the living room. It was quiet.
Right up until Orion came crawling towards you with... Hands that had clearly been dunked in around five different buckets of paint. Big glossy purple eyes and a pout as if he was more disappointed in himself then you'd be.
"Mama…" he murmured as he touched your leg clumsily with one hand as if trying to show you what happened by making you a mess too. It's still hard raising Orion no matter how calm he is. With his powers it's scarily clear he's destined for some sort of greatness whether he knows it or not. But, for now (and forever) all he craves and adores is you, his mother — because even paint messes look like constellations when you make them.