My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

When I was a kid, me and my dad got into stargazing. We'd go out into the garden at about 4pm, because during the winter it was dark enough and I wasn't tired enough yet, and we'd spread out a cover on the small amount of grass, hot chocolate clasped in my hand like it was the only thing to stop me floating up into the atmosphere I didn't yet understand existed, before I realised gravity was the only certainty in life and I wasn't going anywhere. I must have been seven or eight years old, still in love with Peter Pan and not knowing what my future would hold.

He pointed out the usual, Orion, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia the Seven Sisters, the idea of two stars sometimes being so close that they almost look like one, and I thought that was so wonderful, that they were close enough to each other to merge entirely unless you didn't look directly at them, because they were so bright that when they were together you couldn't tell the difference. Like the Seven Sisters, you can't see all seven of them unless you look slightly to one side, because a few are so faint, because a few of them were too shy to stand being stared at. When I taught myself to stare to the side, I felt like I'd learnt the secret of the universe, and I was so proud that I didn't tell my dad how to do it, my own secret with the stars.

The night I realised there were stars beyond the stars, stars we could only see with the telescope he got and then there were still more that we wouldn't be able to see, I felt how small I was, and it was terrifyingly wonderful. This was before I even knew about Doctor Who and Star Wars, when I didn't realise how people have been fascinated by Out There.

He asked me if I could spot any constellations, and I'm sad to say I can no longer remember many of the names I learnt. But there's one; delphinus, the dolphin. One of the first nights, I pointed up to what looked like a sideways diamond with one star to one side, asking if that counted. I hadn't yet grasped the fact that constellations are made up, anyway. They're just a way to make sense of the mess above us and around us, to make us feel a little bit better about the fact that we're surrounded by things we don't yet understand, things we haven't explored. Maybe to make us feel a little less scared by it all.

Delphinus was named supposedly by a group of sailors. Their ship got turned over in a storm, or something. Or one of them fell out, I can't remember. But a dolphin caught them, carried them above the water. I'm reluctant to search it up again because I feel like it would ruin the story that made me feel safer when I looked up, so long as I could catch sight of that dolphin watching over me and sailors.

I would stare up at it all, and the first time I saw one moving I was convinced I'd imagined it. When I decided I wasn't, I was terrified. I thought we'd been spotted looking, that whatever it was would come and get me. Dad explained it was just a satellite, and that the same one would pass over that exact point in 90 minutes, because that's how long it takes to get around the world, and isn't that brilliant? Now when I look up, I wonder if it really is a satellite, or if it's something else, but it doesn't scare me any more. I know I'm just one person, and whatever it is doesn't care if I've seen it. Now, I believe it's the TARDIS, or the Enterprise coasting the edge of the sky until it can get back to it's own time, and I feel safe.

And when you look up at the milky way, the belt of so many stars it looks like a nightmare to a kid with issues concerning crows, you're staring out of the edge of this galazy. You're staring right up/down/into the unknown, the direction the Enterprise would boldly go so we didn't have to worry about it any more. If I stare too long I get dizzy on the idea that it just keeps going.

But the night I realised something could be looking back, my dad wasn't there to share it with me. I think it was because of Ivan, actually. He had this monologue from a story we played around with, my character standing with Sherlock on the crows nest of the Jolly Roger Reichenbach, sharing his coat and looking up from Neverland. They were inside a star, but that shouldn't be so weird to me now because so are we, in a way. What if there are other Neverlands, Sherlock asked in wonderment. What if there are versions of it in all those stars? What if we didn't just take the second star to the right and straight on til morning, but we took the first to the left, straight on til teatime? What if we're looking up, and something is looking right back.

Sure, it was written in a story, but I still wonder. I figured out alone that all those stars are suns, that all those suns have their own solar system. That space is forever expanding and one day it's going to reverse, to implode until everything that's ever existed or will exist is squashed into a single space the proportions of which our languages cannot even begin to name, and then the whole process may be repeated over.

I'd really like to find that speech, to print it out on my wall because it's been almost a year and I haven't forgotten and I want to read it until it's tattooed over my heart, reminding me that whatever I'm doing, whatever I feel and whatever scares me, there's probably someone out there keeping an eye on me.

When I get a kid, I'm going to take them to the top of a hill, with a blanket, some binoculars and a flask of hot chocolate, and I'm going to show them the stars. I'll show them the planets that are in sight, how you can actually see the rings of Jupiter if you look in a strong enough lens, how Mars actually shows bright red mixed with the blinding white reflection of the sun, how some of the stars we can see are long dead, and we're looking at the light it emitted back when dinosaurs were around, we're staring into the past like time travellers do, and I'm going to feel the amazement and excitement I did all those years ago as the knowledge fills my kid's imagination. I'll show them the very things that I've held close to my heart for years and I'll teach them about the dolphin that's kept an eye on me and all those adventurous sailors.

I'll show him the meteor showers, so many you can't possibly wish on them all as they caress the edge of the atmosphere and take your wishes back out into the universe, the closest thing to First Contact that I've ever witnessed, and I'll hold both the kid and my lover close under the blanket of dying suns like we're the only people left alive.