“Uh-hu.” I nodded.
“And what would that be?”
“Jupiter.”
“Ha!” He rocked back a bit. “That’s pretty funny.”
“I know.” I snuggled into his shoulder. “No one else in the entire vampire community would have laughed at that, but, I appreciate your amusement.”
“I think you’re funny, Ara. I ‘get’ you,” he said simply.
I hugged his arm, shivering a little. “Will you tell me about one of the stars?”
“Really?” He looked down at me, surprise alight in his eyes.
“Yeah. I always wondered about them, but just never thought to read a book or ask someone.”
“Well, I would actually love to tell you about them,” he laughed his words out. “No one ever wants to talk about this stuff. It seems like all the immortals have lost that sense of wonder, and any human I ever hung out with lacked the depth to sit and talk about such things.”
I shuffled my hips a little bit closer to his, stealing some of the warmth from his body. “You can talk about them all night to me, Jase. I’d love that.”
“Know what I love?”
“What?” I looked up at him.
“I love it when you call me Jase. No one ever has.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah. It’s just you. And I really like it.”
I grinned into his shoulder. “Well, Jase, talk stars with me.”
“Okay, well, see that star up there?” He pointed into the eternity of night.
“The silver one, or the silver one next to it?” I laughed.
He rubbed his chin and shook his head, smiling. “Good point. Um, pick the brightest star in the sky.”
My eyes scanned the firefly convention and stopped on one; my wishing star. “Okay. I see it.”
“Do you know what it’s called?”
“No.”
“That’s Sirius. As a scientist, I'm tempted to say it’s technically not the brightest star in the sky, just the brightest one you see. And I should tell you it’s made of this and that, but you’d prefer the romantic, historical side, wouldn’t you?”
I nodded against his shoulder.
“Historians consider it to be so much more than just a star—some actually believed it was magic. A nineteenth century writer said that it has some kind of mystic influence over our world, and ancient Egyptian’s believed it was responsible for the flooding of the Nile each year, which, in turn, brought new life through soil regeneration—an occurrence they relied on for survival and prosperity.”
“A star flooded the Nile?”
“That’s what they believed. So, even as far back as when the Pyramids were built, Sirius was influencing people’s imaginations—and lives.”
“So it is a magic star?”
“I don’t know. Has a wish ever come true for you?”
I angled my face up to smile in the radiance of his grin. “You came back.”
His eyes softened and he looked away. “Then maybe my wish will come true, too.”
“What’s your wish?”
He looked down at my knees, pressed tightly together to keep from shaking. “Are you cold?”
I nodded, biting my teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter.
“Silly girl. You should have told me. I don't feel the cold like you do.” He rolled his shirt off his shoulders and wrapped it over mine, leaving himself in the white T-shirt he had under it. “Better?”
“A little.” I tugged it around me, laying the base slightly over my knees.
“Do you want to go inside?”
“No. I'm fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re shaking.” He put his arm around me.
“That’s a bit better,” I said, pushing my shoulder into the warmth of his armpit.
“Okay. Just a few more minutes and we’ll go in.”
“Okay.”
But a few minutes passed and turned into hours, and the stars rotated in the sky, taking today and turning it into tomorrow.
I calmed myself from the laughter of his last comment about movie topics no one had ever covered, and a good one came to mind. “I’ve got it,” I said. “Aliens versus vampires.”
He laughed loudly. “Who do you think would win?”
“Guess it depends what the alien race is capable of. But, if you think about it, we’ll probably get to find out one day. I mean, we’re immortal, so we may have to defend the Earth against evil aliens somewhere in the future.”
“Hm.” He nodded. “Never thought of that.”
“That’s the good thing about never dying, I guess.”
“What, being able to see if aliens are real?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Learning the secrets of the universe.”
“Being around for the end of the world.”
“End of the world,” I said very quietly to myself, thinking about that as I looked across the almost pitch-black ocean. “Do you really think there’re aliens out there?”
“There is. We’ve already found proof of living organisms—”
“No, I mean like aliens on TV.”
“Could be.” He shrugged, grinning. “It’s a big universe out there, and we’ve only got the technology to actually see about four percent of it.”
“So what's the other ninety…?” Oh, crap, brain not working.
“Six,” he said.
“Yeah. I knew that. What’s the other ninety-six percent?”
“That’s the eternal question, Ara, and the answer is; we have no idea.”
“Helpful.”
He laughed. “We have theories, though. Since the nineteen-thirties, we scientists have come to call the stuff we can't see—the invisible substance that holds everything together—Dark Matter.”
“Dark Matter?” I scoffed. “Sounds like a problem you have with a Sith Lord.”
Jason chuckled. “And yet it is much more complex than a bad guy with a Lightsaber.”
“Why?”
“Because we can't see it—yet. We know it’s there, because we can see the gravitational effect it has on objects around it, but light just shines right through it—we can't touch it or capture it.”
“Riiiight. A force that no one can actually see, yet you’re sure is there,” I said.
“Yes. I mean, realistically, the stars in the galaxies don't contain enough mass or gravity to stay together; Dark Matter is that bond—it’s what stops them all from flinging apart.”