Janet Homans

Those Who Dwell Beneath the Starless Skies

A sharp and textureless plane of nothing but black was spread flush above the earth. Carmen O'Reilly believed it to be beautiful. Or more accurately, she thought she believed it to be beautiful, anyway. It was beautiful in the way that old pictures of Yellowstone, before the industrialization, are beautiful. The kind of beautiful the old folks shed a tear at. Nature is beautiful. It's just one of those fundamental facts of life. And the sky was nature.