Ep. 73- A Star Falls From Heaven
ext. seawood forest clearing night
A clearing within the Seawood Forest. Overgrowth. Trees. Flowers and fauna. It is a forest of dream, idyllic in its soft green and purple glowlight beneath a soft sky of pitch black fabric bedding numerous white hot blinking stars. This forest is the lunar mini-golf course of your childhood dreams, its florescent colors emphasized beneath the blacklight of the starlit heavens.
Alice awakens. Arising with a start from a bed of leaves, she gasps, her small chest heaving, hands flailing out wildly, limbs convulsing in brief panic as her eyes convey the truth of her situation to her- she is alive- fretfully so, all stoked with electric impulse and self-murderous intent.
Alice falls backwards again, letting her head thud against the leaf bed. Her thin fingers search for a pulse in her neck that is otherwise hilariously obvious within her own own chest.
ALICE
Beat. Beat. Beat.
She repeats this mantra, a spoken order to the bucket drum brigade buried deep within her to calm the post-game tirade. It works.
A stirring sound. Not from within but without- the forest moves.
Alice shifts her weight nervously, coming to her side but not standing.
The sounds of rustling grass, broken leaves and snapping twigs continues, becoming more intense, more near until the sounds form a chorus of movement all about her.
Rising from the ground around her, as though emerging from hiding- flowers, blades of grass, vines- vegetation of all kinds, even little weeds rise from the dirt, greeting her in soft reception, some even going so far as to wave their little leaves like limbs to her.
Though the plants cannot speak, their disposition can be read as warm- they quiver and silently coo in a way that only plants can- a way that most in our century are now deaf to. But not Alice. However, they stop just short of total encroachment- and in this brief moment of pause, Alice feels a sense of gravity as a queen might when being received by loyal subjects.
Overhead, a strobe of white light flashes bathing the forest floor in a brief flash- and with the strobe, the soft twinkling note of a child’s bedroom chime. One note first, then another- then several in succession, like a musicbox tasked with setting a weary soul to sleep.
Alice’s gaze turns upward toward the sky and again, the sky flashes, the notes pulsing louder and in succession until the tune can be parsed out to be that of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. As soon as it begins, the little concerto ceases, the strobing lights ease and the sky bends and breaks its fabric to create a a rift from which a small stairway of light emerges all the way down to Alice’s clearing.
A soft cranking sound can be heard, like that of a musicbox being wound back up, and the stairway begins to move like a downward escalator, the tune picking back up where it left off. Emerging from the rift, a young woman begins to travel down the escalator.
Alice is immediately struck by the extraordinary attire of this woman of the sky, who wears a simple black dress with white frills and yellow stars. A black headband pulls back long, straight strands of shock yellow hair. Protruding from the headband, attached to small wire springs, are little glowing stars. In her left arm she holds a pitcher of clay. Her eyes, inky black, betray no color within their pools.
She is THE STAR. Or, more aptly put- Alice’s Star.
