Imminent Arrival

I forced my way past the two and headed for the stairs up to little Daniels room. I had to make them believe, I had to prove my case, I felt there might just be enough time to convince them and make some kind of escape, to hide out, to make at least some effort to preserve humankind.

"Leave him alone!" Sophia cried out behind me, she was sincerely afraid, to her I was a madman in pursuit of her only son.

"I just need him to see Sophia… he’ll show you" I called down as I reached his room and opened the door.

I ran to his bed and turned on the lamp on his nightstand. Then gently, yet with urgency I shook his shoulders.

"Danny… Danny boy wake up now."

He opened his eyes slowly, the ten year old boy blinked up at me as my face came into focus.

"Uncle Dennis?"

"Yes, yes it’s uncle Dennis. I need you to get up and look at something for me."

I pulled back the covers and helped him out of bed. I reached for his house slippers just as his parents came into the doorway.

"That’s quite enough now" said Charles as he approached us, ready to intervene.

"Wait" I said. "Just… let me show the boy, please… if you still think I’m crazy afterwards then I will leave here… I’ll commit my self for goodness sake, just let me show him"

The conviction and desperation in my voice must have had at least some effect. With a sigh Charles backed off some, not voicing his approval, but at least letting Danny and me slip by. Sophia on the other hand was not as easy an obstacle. She stood in the doorway with a postured stance that made it clear she wasn’t about to let her son leave his room.

"You can’t be serious Charles" she said. "He’s… he’s crazy, and your going to let him take Daniel outside. You don’t know what he’s going to do."

"I’m not crazy… Sophia, listen… you can follow us out, in fact I want you to. Here, you can even be the one taking him outside, just let the boy look into the sky, you have no idea how important this is."

Danny looked up as I gave his hand to his mother, the poor child was understandably confused and at the moment being treated like property. He narrowed his brow somewhat and then pulled away from his mother and slipped by her. She turned to go after him.

"Danny, wait!" she called.

As kids go, he was already halfway down the stairs before she even reached the stairwell. He headed straight for the front door, at which point I followed the two of them. I quickly caught up to Sophia and we went outside at the same time. Danny was standing on the porch, looking up into the direction I had spent teaching him on so many nights.

I knelt besides Danny and looked up with him.

"You see anything peculiar son?" I said.

Danny frowned and cocked his head to the right.

"Well… were those stars just born?" he said, then turning to me as if he were getting exited at his conclusions. "Did you see them being born uncle Dennis?"

Before I could speak he turned to both his parents, which were now in the front doorway.

"Did you see them explode and then be stars? Wow… uncle Dennis said you could live your whole life and never see a star being born, if they were born now, then it means that they were really born hundreds of years ago and the light is just now reaching earth."