Work Text:
Humans play connect-the-dots with the stars. These drawings are given names, stories, identities, and are then passed down for generations, through the tongues of millions. And when these identities reach a certain decibel of loudness, the stars hear them. And they come to life.
Tethered.
That’s the first word a certain drawing feels when they are born. Their identity, a wolf in pursuit of its prey. Their story, of hunger, but deeper than that, a yearning, a desire to become one with another. Forever in pursuit, their name is Changkyun.
The hare, naturally, wakes up no sooner than the wolf. Their canvases are one, after all. But there is one slight difference. The hare’s story is also one of hunger, but of freedom. Not to escape the predator, no, but to become unshackled from the fixed frame. For they are forever fleeing from the other, you see. And Wonho wants to turn around.
Strange, isn’t it, that no matter the cruelty the humans paint the skies with, the stars make up their own minds. They take one look at the blueprint their creators toss, and then it’s destroyed. Up in flames, into the brilliant blue and red infernos as each identity resolves to create their own fate. And create they do, with vast, beautiful brushstrokes of color and light and energy. What the humans see as simple drawings on a flat plane, the stars dimensionalize into complex souls that seek comfort, meaning, a companion.
Alas. Stars are tethered. If not for eternity, then for millions and possibly billions of years. Try as Changkyun might, they cannot catch up to the hare. And equally so, the stars making up Wonho will burn into nothingness long before they are able to change direction.
But this doesn’t dampen their resolve, not one bit. For the universe is boundless, and time may as well be, and stars are nothing if they aren’t patient.
Wonho makes the first move. A star in their system becomes a supernova, just as a white dwarf reaches its last days of being. And for a brief moment (or as brief as it gets on a cosmic scale), the hare’s hind leg closest to the wolf reaches out to almost (almost!) light up Changkyun’s snout. The brightness emits light with the brilliance of an entire galaxy before dissipating. The hare has put their feelings out in the open, and the wolf would be a fool to not understand this as a confession.
It is Changkyun’s turn to respond, and they devise a plan spanning several eons through the mode of a wandering star. It takes precision, a delicateness to convince one of their own to go ahead, see what the rest of the universe has to offer. And then the star is on its way, finally escaping the weak forces of a spiral galaxy making up the wolf’s heart. It travels out and over, its momentum making an arc above Wonho before the gravity of the stars in the hare’s eyes draw it towards itself, twinkling. Confession reciprocated.
They take turns after that, sending love letters in the form of cosmic rays and solar flares, in a constant exchange of charged particles. The stars they are made up of are lightyears away from each other. But the sheer energy of their wants and needs defeat the barriers of distance. They stay facing the direction that the humans created them in, knowing in confidence the direction of their souls face another way.
They've always been in love. And they always will be.