The words they used at home to describe a bright starry night were redundant in this isolated equatorial nightscape. Redundant and a tad pathetic he realized as he gazed dumbstruck at the seething sky. A sky bursting with sidereal light and dripping with silver flecks and oozing mercury droplets. It was a real night sky that the candles and occasional flashlights of the camp could not corrupt or corral.

The blackest of deepest black spawned a sea of stars on this perfect night and the sheer intensity of the diamond white light was intoxicating. He watched the scene deepen before him as his city dweller eyes relaxed and grew accustomed and perhaps aware for the first time, of the vastness of space and the miracle of the Earth.

For Michael the scene before him was awe inspiring, and as he tried to sleep between the roar of the ocean and the audible twinkling of a gazillion stars, his mind searched for calm quiet moments.

Isaac, who had been driving the banana boat for the white surfers over the past 3 days, also lay in bed searching for sleep under the splendor of his home’s magnificent tarp of speckled darkness.

His eyes passed through the tree branches to the sky, but it was not awe inspiring, it was just ‘the sky’. Weren’t all skies this bright he thought as he suddenly wondered whether he had remembered to turn the fuel line off in his boat.

The waning gibbous moon meant other things to him. Things like lower tides and problems getting the boats out in the morning.

His youngest child coughed beside him again and he realised he would have to ask Clem whether he could use one of the boats to take her to the clinic at Pias in the morning.

She was getting worse and the awful black herbal potion that Aunty Flor had been making for her just wasn’t helping her at all. He stared at the stars and he felt a tightness in his chest.

They lay in different huts no more than 50 metres apart. It was a world apart in reality though. Michael sweated and tossed and turned on this the 5th day of his 8 day visit to the island.

He replayed memories of the surf that morning at Millili in an effort to ease off into sleep but the rousing images; the roar of those large perfect waves had the opposite effect. so he stared once again at the stella sky and waited for the searing image of another piece of space junk re entering our atmosphere.

Isaac toosed and turned and tried to get to sleep in his crowded hut on day 5 of the fourth month of his 31st year on the island.

I don’t think there is anything more to say.