When You Wish Upon a Star

"Amelia, what are you doing?"

"Asking a star for a wish."

"Oh Amelia, how many times do I have to tell you that-..."

Amelia Pond drowns out the voice of her aunt, hoping that she isn't in for another lecture. It's not that she can't take them, it's just that she wishes that Aunt Sharon would accept that she likes things that aren't real. After all, she never had any problems telling her the story of Pandora's Box when she was little. So why is believing in the stars so bad? Why should the age of seven be so different from her age a few years ago?

According to her psychiatrist, it makes all the difference in the world.

Sighing, and continuing to look up at the night sky from her bedroom, Amelia feels like the world itself right now. All alone, with no company apart from the moon and the sun, hanging alone in the void. It doesn't feel right somehow, how these three celestial bodies are the only things in all creation, something that every so often a wacky astronomer will try to dispute. Galileo tried making planets up before renouncing his ideas, there's even some old Egyptian inscriptions that display dots in the night sky. Still, science has long since established that there is indeed nothing out there. Never has been, never will be.

Still, Amelia believes.

"Um, stars?" she whispers, not sure how she's meant to talk to things that she can't see. "You probably don't get talked to much, but..."

The girl trails off. She isn't sure how to go about this. At least she isn't until Pinocchio catches her eye, sitting on her shelf among numerous other works of fiction. Remembering the wish made upon the moon in the story, she tries again,

"Starlight, starbright, please grant the wish I make tonight..."

A bit of a variation, but it sounds more...right somehow than what Geppetto ever uttered. Still, unlike the puppet master, Amelia can't complete her sentence. As right as this feels, she still can't avert the fact that there is indeed, nothing up there.

So why does she feel that there is?

Lying down on her bed, though not yet ready to go to sleep, Amelia wonders if she's alone in her hope, her belief almost? History is full of nutters who claimed there was something up there. Take Vincent van Gogh for instance-one of the great painters in this day and age, but still insisted on depicting objects in the night sky apart from the moon. Not stars exactly, more like swirls. Amelia doesn't know that much about art, but she has to wonder whether every academic should be so quick to point out his work's "inconsistencies."

Did Vincent do the same, lying here, wanting to wish on something other than the moon? Or did he, did he...

Even as Aunt Sharon calls out that it's time for bed, Amelia smiles. Maybe she needs to take a small step before the larger one. Just as Neil Armstrong made a "giant leap for mankind" when he landed on the moon (especially so since there's nowhere else to go in the scope of creation), maybe she can too.

Getting out some crayons, she begins drawing the night sky. Like van Gogh did, painting it blue, but drawing what she knows is there. Not swirls, but stars. Right alongside the moon. Maybe if she can see them, she will know how to make a wish on them.

Hopefully Aunt Sharon won't find out...

A/N

While The End of Time remains my favourite season finale in the revived series, the duology of The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang sticks in my mind as the most original. Two things in particular were the idea of human society developing without any other celestial bodies in the sky apart from the moon and an exploding TARDIS for a sun and something I have to give Moffat credit for-Amy and Amelia feel like seperate characters, yet this is, in my mind, a case of good writing rather than poor character development. Somehow in light of both these percieved pros, I came up with this.

And no, fezes aren't cool...