Falling From the Sun

Dear Asteria,

I hope this letter finds you—though I don’t know where to send it. Perhaps it will find you between the cracks of light in the sky, where you used to live, or drift on a forgotten breeze into the place where the sun no longer shines for me.

Do you remember the last time we stood together on the rooftop? Your hair caught the fire of the morning sun like strands of golden thread, as though you had stolen light itself and dared it to stay. You always did have that way of bending brightness to your will. I suppose that’s why we called you “Sun Girl” back then.

But now, everything feels colder.

I write to you because I need to tell someone—anyone—that I saw it happen. Not in a dream, not in some fevered hallucination, but with my own eyes.

I saw you fall from the sun.

It wasn’t sudden, like a star exploding into dust. No, it was slow. Silent. Like watching the last petal fall from a dying flower. You were radiant at first, almost too bright to look at. People on the street paused, shielding their eyes. I heard someone whisper, “Is that an angel?” I didn’t answer. I knew it was you. I knew by the way you descended—not like something broken, but like something letting go.

And then you crashed.

The light exploded around you in ripples, waves, and echoes. It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t even heat. It was something else entirely—grief in golden form. And in the aftermath, there was only the smell of ash and the hush of a crowd too stunned to speak.

They never found a body. Not even your shadow. Some say it was a trick of light, a solar flare, a meteor. But I know better. I know you.

I remember when you told me, “The higher I go, the farther I fall. But I have to keep flying anyway.” I laughed then. Thought it was poetry. A metaphor. I didn’t know you meant it literally.

Maybe the sun was never just a place for you. Maybe it was a calling. A burden. A place where you could finally shine as you were meant to—but not without cost. Maybe the brightness you carried was never meant to last forever.

Since that day, the sky looks different to me. Dimmer. Tired. Like it’s missing a piece of itself. And sometimes—when the clouds break just right—I still see a shimmer, like your laughter painted across the horizon.

So I write this not for closure, but as a reminder. You were real. You mattered. You burned too bright, but you burned. And for a moment, the world saw the sun up close and called it beautiful.

If you ever come back—if you ever rise again—I'll be watching. Just as I was that day, with my hand over my heart and my eyes turned to the sky.

Until then,

Yours in the dark,

Caius