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Author's Note: Written for fic challenge #1.

Myth
by Tara O'Shea

The stars were a myth. A fairy tale. He'd never believed in them.

The night sky to him was an endless expanse of grey-blue, the haze reflecting the lights of the streetlamps and buildings back at him. There were no pinpricks in the curtain of his night, to chart a ship by. The stars were as fantastical as giants and been stalks, as unbelievable as unicorns and dragons. As unfathomable as Apollo in his chariot or Asgaard's rainbow bridge.

Until he was eight years old.

His grammar school homeroom class had gone trooping off with Mrs. Nelson and Ms. Kelly—his favourite two teachers—to the planetarium stuck out on the end of a pier into the ocean, where the wind whipped so hard that you were worried you'd blow right off into the swells. They somehow managed to get sixty kids to adhere to the buddy system and not go wandering off through the steel and marble halls. Now, it seemed like a miracle. Back then, it was just routine. For some reason city kids on Demeter were so used to being herded around like cattle that they didn't even seem to notice.

It was a crowded world—one of the early settlements, built up so quick it seemed destined to follow in the wake of Earth-that-was and be burned out and empty long before her sisters and brothers were completely tapped. Wash had always figured that folks just hadn't quite learned their lessons yet, when they'd terraformed and settled on Demeter. That maybe