Featured Short Stories
Starlight, Starbright
Written when D. L. Norris was only ten years old, Starlight, Starbright reveals the early stirrings of a storyteller drawn to wonder, tenderness, and the quiet lessons of the heart. This short story follows young Susan through the innocence of a wish, the ache of loss, and the healing power of love that arrives in an unexpected form.
Starlight, starbright,composer unknown, mid/late century
First star I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight.
Susan was eight years old that summer. She stood barefoot in the yard, her nightgown fluttering in the warm June breeze, her teeth clenched in concentration as she lifted her face toward the star-filled heavens. Her family’s farmhouse sat five miles from the nearest neighbor, and above their patch of prairie the sky was always crowded with so many stars that Susan often believed she could reach up and touch one if she wished hard enough.
That night, her wish was her very own horse. Not just any horse, but one with a coat dappled like clouds, and a dark mane like a river at midnight. She wished so hard her head ached. Her father, having seen her nightly ritual from the window, only mumbled to his wife, “She’ll grow out of it.” Her mother, who knew better, smiled and said nothing.
But the wish blossomed. On her birthday, a cardboard box with sugar cubes and a knotted red ribbon sat on the table, and her father lifted her onto a wobbly kitchen chair so she could see out the back window. There, tied to the apple tree, was an appaloosa filly with a dappled white coat, too young for riding but old enough to call out in a worried, high-pitched whinny when Susan’s excited shout echoed across the yard.
She named her Starlight, because Susan insisted she was made of wishes and star dust. The filly was curious and gentle, with a delicate head and wary eyes that softened once Susan pressed her face to the velvet nose and promised, “I’ll love you forever.” She meant it. The weeks were a flurry of brushing, braiding, and gallops through the pasture. Soon Starlight could follow a dozen commands and would stand perfectly still while Susan climbed up to lay across her back and imagine leaping over the moon.
The winter after Susan’s tenth birthday, Starlight grew restless. She paced the fence at night, ears pricked and tail lashing, until one cold morning the vet came and said, “She’s going to have a baby.” Susan was thrilled.
The following spring, the birth came early and hard. Starlight struggled and shivered in the barn. Susan’s mother sent her to bed, but she curled under the covers with her flashlight, the barn’s lamplight a pale glow in the distance. Just before dawn, the shouting started. Susan ran outside barefoot and found her parents kneeling in the straw. The foal—tiny, dusted gold and white—lay trembling by Starlight’s side, but Susan’s beautiful horse was still.
The vet said, “She tried, honey, and we did everything we could.” Susan didn’t answer. The silence in her chest was a black hole, and when her mother wrapped her in a quilt and carried her inside, she refused to speak until the day that Starlight was put to rest.
Susan named the foal Starbright, but for weeks she could hardly bear to look at her. The filly’s legs were awkwardly long, her mouth was always damp with milk, and her cries sounded so much like Starlight’s that they made Susan angry. Still, Susan fed her, holding the oversized bottle while the little foal butted against her with a soft, round head. When Starbright followed her to the fence, Susan stepped away. When the foal whinnied from the stall, Susan shut the barn door behind her.
One evening, Susan’s father found her at the kitchen table, turning a scrap of hay over and over between her fingers. “She needs you,” he said quietly. “And it’s what Starlight would have wanted.” Susan pretended not to hear him. But after midnight, when the house had gone still, she slipped out to the barn. Inside, Starbright had worked herself into a panic, circling the stall until she slipped and bloodied her leg. Susan began to cry as she cleaned the scrape. The foal trembled and leaned her whole weight against Susan’s arm, as if only the warmth of another body could keep her standing. Something in Susan broke then, and she held Starbright close until her own sobs finally wore her out.
After that night, the change came slowly. Susan still moved carefully around Starbright, as if kindness might hurt if she offered too much of it at once. But she no longer turned away when the foal called to her. She brushed her coarse mane, warmed the bottles, and, before long, set up small hurdles in the field with cinder blocks and battered fence posts. Starbright was nothing like Starlight—she was stubborn, reckless, and always hungry, with no patience for rules. She kicked and bucked and ran circles around Susan, who sometimes found herself laughing even when Starbright knocked her to the ground.
By late autumn, after the first frost silvered the pasture, Susan realized Starbright had grown nearly as tall as her mother. When Susan called from the fence, the filly came every time, racing toward her with such wild joy that she seemed ready to lift from the earth and run straight into the stars.
Starbright was not Starlight, but Susan no longer needed her to be. She had learned to love the filly’s wildness, her stubborn heart, and her fierce refusal to become anything other than herself. The wish Susan had made beneath the summer stars had come true in a way she could never imagined.