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The village was low and quiet for the night and the moon was at its brightest for the month. Its small doses of light came into rays between the small gaps of the curtain in the room. The air kept the room cool and cozy for the two grey trolls, one was seated by the small bed on a chair, hair completely unraveled down and deep black. While the second, a young trolling, was tucked into bed, soft snores came from him as he slept. Branch's hair, unlike his mother's, was still upwards but nevertheless still had that same pitch black hue.
The room was dim along with an occasional whistle of the wind coming and going, from the side of the bed where Aster sat in her chair as she hummed quietly. Her posture slouched and head hung low as she continued to hum. Eyes closed shut as if it grounded her in some way with the fatigue she felt.
Exhaustion, it was a feeling that Aster had become used too for years on end now. To her it felt like her entire life she had been tired to the bone. Even if she knew logically it didn’t make sense, she wasn’t born tired. Aster had just run herself ragged by her career as a Pop Star years ago.
‘Things are easier now…’ Aster thought as she opened her eyes to the dim room and gazed down to her son sleeping soundly. Bundled up in blankets and snuggling up to a small caterpillar plush she had made for him. The lullaby she had been quietly humming stopped as she felt the corners of her mouth curl into a small smile at the image of her son.
‘I’m here for you,’ she thought as she reached out to the blankets and pulled them closer to Branch’s sleeping face. ‘I’m not going to mess this up again,’ Aster told herself as she leaned back to her chair. Letting the tension she felt in her shoulder loosen, a phantom of familiarity came back to her. She only truly relaxed when she knew no one was watching her back when she was still a Pop Star.
She needed to fix that soon…nothing good was probably going to come of it. After all nothing good came out of her career for her. Nothing but exhaustion and excessive after tour parties with drinks that made her sick. And what was it all for? Drowning out her grief over her husband? Be the center of attention? Being a shitty mother to her sons?
Aster clutched her nightgown at those questions—she didn’t need them for the night. She was better now wasn’t she? Aster was getting the help she needed, and it showed in her being not as shitty of a mother to Branch. Was what Aster kept repeating to herself as she once again glanced over to Branch sleeping soundly without a single hard line on his face.
Just be present in your son’s life Aster, was a vow she knew she could never break again with Branch. She broke it with her other sons and that… that turned out horribly .
Aster looked down to the floor, not knowing if she felt shame or guilt for even thinking about her other sons. Maybe it was both. It wasn’t for her sons—muses they were never the problem—rather it was her . It was her who left them alone as they grew up while she toured around the Troll Tree constantly trying to keep up with the facade of happiness she gave off to the community. At the time it felt right to her—it felt right to see everybody’s faces smiling and calling for an encore after encore. It made her feel like she was still happy but she knew now that it was just a distraction.
For every aftermath of a concert or tour she finished when she was backstage in her room the constant buzzing of her mind would come back to haunt her—unfinished conversations with her husband, taunts of other children calling her a freak when she was small, the pressured push and pull of the possibility of her family being moved back to the lower branches to be eaten if she stopped singing.
Yet she didn’t see when she had practically become indispensable for the king at the time that his threat for her family practically became hollow.
Aster spared a glance towards Branch, the soft moonlight rays allowed by the small gaps of the curtain nearby gazed down to his blanket. Distantly, Aster had a fleeting thought of how the moonlight despite the dimness of the room gave off the image of Branch’s once bright blue colors to come back. She stamped that thought out though she wasn’t going back to going to what ifs or giving out hope that a troll’s colors would suddenly just be there one day. Yet as Aster looked on to her youngest son, memories seem to overlap with the familiar image.
The moon bright and night at its peak. A dim bedroom cooled by the air and a young trolling sleeping peacefully. Only years ago there was one difference Aster could in whatever hazy or drunken state she was in remember seeing. The first being the open window revealing the bright stars of the night. Lighting up the darkness, something to admire and rely on.
Much like how she was the brightest star for the trolls in their community once upon a time but like how a star may have looked bright to those who watched. They also burned themselves just to keep their brightness going. Exactly how she burned her relationships with her sons just to stay bright or at least try to stay bright. When her colors at that point had already begun to fade.
Maybe that was why she pushed herself to her career rather than to her family. ‘Things are better to be perfect than broken’ was the unspoken lines between her and older generations of the Troll Tree believed for decades. It was a way to survive from the bergens but it wasn’t a way to raise a child. Let alone two kids, John Dory and Spruce, after her husband died.
Her husband…
That was when things began to burn wasn’t it?
Aster let out a heavy sigh, her heart somehow feeling even heavier than it already was and the sting of tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t stop the quiet stream of tears coming. She needed to let go for the night so she wouldn’t be a wreck in the morning for Branch. He deserved a good childhood no matter how tainted it became before she came back into the picture after her sons left the tree. Likely died in the wilderness or snatched up by a wandering bergen. All the while she slept for two years after Branch’s egg detached from her hair, her suppression of her emotions and horrible decisions finally caught up to her body.
How was it that she was alive while her sons were gone?
Why did she never go support any of their concerts when her career went shit and they were still there?
Why didn’t she cherish what she had before it was gone?
In the silence of the night, her youngest son unaware of the storm in her, Aster grieved for everything she once had and lost. The milestones she missed for Clay and Floyd, two sons she didn’t know anything about before they were gone. For John Dory and Spruce, her two little adventurers who tried to make her smile when her stardom hadn’t begun to burn her yet. For her husband that saw through her facade as a rising star when they were so young and only saw a confused girl that just needed a friend to lean on.
What else could a mother and a fallen star do but grieve to keep going for the son she had left?