If Anyone Is Going To Tell Me That Everything Will Be Okay, I’m Glad It’s David Tennant Telling Me

Kaz shrugged. “Kill us, and you’ll never find Kuwei.” Van Eck appeared to consider this. Then he stepped back. “Guards to me!” he shouted. “Kill everyone but Brekker!” Kaz knew the instant he made his mistake. They’d all known it might come to this. He should have trusted his crew. His eyes should have stayed trained on Van Eck. Instead, in that moment of threat, when he should have thought only of the fight, he looked at Inej. And Van Eck saw it. He blew on his whistle. “Leave the others! Get the money and the girl.”

— SIX OF CROWS, Chapter 45

everyone good, everyone had a little break from my shenanigans? ready for some more meta tonight? cool because @eddiemunsterson woke my ass up at 6am linking me to this post by @thediktatortot wanting to know why the light on Eddie's bike felt important and I wanted to talk about this whole... thing anyway, so GUESS WHAT TODAY IS.

Today we're going to talk about Light and its relationship to the Stranger Things narrative, particularly as it appears in ST4.

Obviously light has always been important to Stranger Things, as it connects the Upside Down with the Right Side Up. We see this with Will communicating through the lights, with the lights showing the passing of the monsters etc.

In season 4, light really comes to the forefront of the story. We see a plethora of instances where light is used to connect plots and as this... thematic undercurrent where the characters are bringing light into the darkness, or moving out of the darkness into the light. Who is holding the light and what they do with it also reflects in the narrative!

Let's take one of my favorites first. I'll put it all below a cut.

When the group first enters the Creel house in 4.05, the first thing Lucas does is try to turn on the light. He knows - they ALL know - that the light is not going to come on; he even jokes about the electric bill, which means he is aware of the connection. So why choose to spend screen time showing him turning on a light he and the others, as well as we, the audience, know isn't going to come on? Because light matters!!

Lucas is narratively connected to Max this season, HARD. Most of his time this season is spent trying to protect her, trying to befriend her, trying to help. When they are seated in the back the RV, he tries to convince her to let someone else put themselves in danger and we see the first thread of connection. She tells him that Vecna only sees the darkness in them, and so her plan is to run to the light.

What is the light? Her good memories, for sure, but we also see evidence of her running directly to literal light when she is first taken. The group put her music on that first time and she sees the crack of light in the darkness, and manages to escape and run to it. Fascinatingly, they choose to have her "light" that she runs to in this instance be to... a literal graveyard. Fascinating because, you know. Generally when we say "don't go into the light" we are telling someone not to die. To come back to us. And here's Max, running to the light to survive, to return to a graveyard. Look, you can see literal sunbeams fanning out from the group below her!

In any case, her memories are her "light" that she is going to run toward, but the bigger "light" in this case is the music that pulls her out completely. The guiding light back to reality, back to safety, back to Lucas. And... just like Lucas cannot turn on the light in the Creel house toward the start, when he is in the Creel house again at the end, he cannot turn on the "light" for Max. He is barred from putting the headphones on her. That's why they used precious screen time showing us Lucas trying to turn on a light everyone knew was not going to turn on.

The first time they enter the Creel house in 4.05 actually contains a LOT of instances of light use that will come back later, so I'll go through them in no particular order.

One of the moments I've actually talked about before is this one:

Dustin turns on the light and Steve has no idea where the light has come from, or where to find light of his own. This is a theme that repeats for him; he tries to use an unlit standing lamp as a weapon, he doesn't see the light over the boathouse when they're looking for Eddie, he doesn't know where they got the light when entering the Creel house, he doesn't initially understand why they're turning off their lights to "look" for Vecna (this comes back), he doesn't think to take light himself into the lake (Eddie hands it to him, he was going to go in with nothing), he drops the light when the tentacle hits the gate membrane.

The only times Steve uses light to useful effect is when he is following someone else's example, which probably says something about how his character is still learning not to be the asshole (the "monster") he was in Season 1. He doesn't initially understand how he can be hearing Dustin's voice; it is Nancy who suggests communication through the lights, and then he sees Nancy trying to turn on the lamp in the Upside Down, and he turns his flashlight around to look at the other lights- which shows them the chandelier. He doesn't initially understand why they are turning their lights OFF to look for Vecna, until he sees Robin's flashlight light up to indicate that Vecna is present, and then when his own lights up instead, he takes lead and follows the monster at the head of the group.

Another interesting thing about Steve + light is that "his" flashlight, that we see many times a) is very visually different than the rest of the group's (everyone else wields the silver duracell flashlights, while Steve's flashlight is red. you know. like the lights in the Upside Down),

and b) trades hands often. Eddie is the one to wrap it up and give it to him to take into the lake.

Robin is the one that rescues it after Steve has dropped it at the bottom of the lake.

Eddie is the one to carry it around in the Upside Down after the bats, even going so far as putting it on his bike when they're all riding around.

As such, Steve's connection to the light is still tentative, uncertain, and often relies on others to exist. He hasn't learned to make his own or what to do with it, which is a pretty good mirror of the rest of his life. He's been trying to make connections with dating, he's distanced from his family, he's been trying to forge friendships with this group (in particular Dustin but honestly what kid hasn't he adopted at this point). He is surrounding himself with people that are connected to the light, that are full of it themselves, and he's learning.

Interestingly, Steve and Lucas' storylines are linked, in that Lucas is taking after Steve pretty hard. He's the one that's into sports, he's the one that lost the girl he loves to her breaking up with him. He's taking on some of Steve's mannerisms even, putting his hands on his hips like Steve does. And he's the other person in the group that doesn't work light the way everyone else does.

Also in the Creel house, we see the moment the kids first find the lightbulb hanging in the room where Vecna is doing sacrifices, where he hooks up to all those vines. This is... well, heartbreaking in its foreshadowing. Look at them standing around the light, the way it is framed in this moment:

Seven lights.

(This is interesting on its own, outside of the use of lights as well- look at where everyone is standing. Max isn't next to Lucas, and she's not even across from him- Steve is. Dustin and Robin are across from one another. Max and Nancy are across from one another. The older teens to the left, the younger teens to the right. We see Steve and Lucas' storylines paralleling. We see Max and Nancy bonding over making weapons later, and it would not surprise me at all to find out Max looks up to Nancy.)

Compared to when the older teens later find the chandelier, and we are treated to this strange, interestingly-framed view of the chandelier:

Five lights.

Or rather, maybe I should say, two lights less than when they started out, the same way two lights in the party will be extinguished; Eddie's and Max's. We also, in the Creel house in 4.05, see similar foreshadowing when they very first enter.

In this moment, we see the group entering the house and it is VERY much framed as the characters stepping out of the bright light of their world (past the broken stained glass window of Vecna's childhood) and into the darkness of the Creel house. But more than that? Who is standing front and center in this moment? None other than Nancy and Max, the two people Vecna will drag into the darkness of his mind world. And they don't just stand there! They enter, wreathed in light, and together they step out of the light, in opposite directions, into the dark, the same way they will later be taken in different directions by Vecna; one to live, one to die. Behind them ("left behind" you might say) is Lucas, who is revealed still standing in the light as Max moves from in front of him and into the dark. Steve and Robin are already in the dark to either side of Nancy as she enters (much like the three of them will be in a group to fight Vecna later).

This moment also connects to the light that is used to find Eddie. In 4.02, when the group is looking for Eddie, Max is the one to see a doorway lit up in the darkness and goes toward it to find their friend. In this case, the boathouse is viewed from almost level ground; lower, but not particularly from above, just distant.

What I find perhaps even more interesting than that is that the light over the boathouse door is one of the parallels in Jason's twisted mirror plotline. Both groups (ours and his) believe they are searching for monsters, except Jason finds his by going toward the light and our group finds theirs by going toward the dark. Where our group finds a friend in the light, his group finds an enemy. In Jason's case, the boathouse is viewed from "on high" so to speak, with Jason looking down upon it instead of being on equal footing.

While everyone else is seeking the light in both of these moments at the boathouse, both times find Eddie hiding from the light. He hides from Dustin and company, and he hides from Jason and company. He is avoiding the light. But the more time he spends around our group, the more we see him guarding and protecting and sharing the light, giving it to Steve, using it to ask for help by sending an SOS, putting it on his bike to guide the way. Rather than hide, he actively engages in protecting everyone else- much the same way Steve does, except that unlike Steve, Eddie's relationship to light is already solid. As soon as he knows it is friendly, he settles right into guiding and sharing.

So, to answer the original question of "why does the light on Eddie's bike feel Important," it's because it is. It's because it is one of the ways light is being used overall and it's a visual representation of Eddie guiding with light (but he's doing so by borrowing Steve's light, the trust the group has in Steve, he has the light because Robin gave it to him after she rescued it from where Steve had dropped it). It's important, visually in that moment, because it separates him from the others; they will form a team of three, and he will not be a part of it. They will survive, and he will not.

It's also significant because we see the change between the two worlds; we see visual representation of a loss of light in the moment the view switches between the kids biking together with everyone having a light to guide them, to the Upside Down where only one person has a light, and it's Eddie, and it's borrowed- the same way lights native to the Upside Down must borrow their shine from other sources:

(also LOVE the moment before this where they're riding and their shadows stretch out ahead of them... Literal foreshadows)

There is one last incidence of light use that I want to talk about and it's perhaps the most obvious one and definitely the one that links up with the rest of the show, and that's the instances of the group interacting with the light between worlds, particularly the chandelier and the lite bright.

Nancy, is the first to touch the chandelier light at all. She is the one that suggests they use the light to communicate with the Right Side Up in the first place, and the one to actually "write" on the lite bright for the group. She takes time, every time they see the particles, to "play" in them.

But for all that she is the one suggesting contact, the one to touch first, she is the last to reach for the chandelier in the group shot, and the first to pull away again. She steps back and lets Eddie establish contact with Dustin, and only steps in when they actually need to talk, not just signal. In the Creel house in 4.05, when Max begs the question of whether or not Vecna can hear them when the light goes out. The "obvious" answer seems to be "no" but then we find out at the chandelier scene that actually... maybe he CAN. Maybe he can hear Nancy talking about communicating with the other side through the lights, and there's a good chance that that's why he chooses her to try to communicate to El, later on.

Outside of just Nancy, the moment when the fruity four are interacting with the chandelier as a group is important, too. I have seen a lot of gifs of the moment they're all standing there gazing wonderingly into the light together, but I have yet to see the moment before that, and I think the moment before that is actually... SO much more important. Nancy touches the light first, and then stops, and we get this:

What an absolute sucker punch of framing. This light, shining in the dark, surrounded by evil vines. And then, from below, from the darkness, a hand slowly emerges, reaching for the light, stretching for it, followed by two more, followed, reluctantly, by a fourth as the camera begins to drop and the glow of the light is shown reflecting on the faces of the gathered, much the same way the chandelier itself is only lit because it is reflecting the light from the flashlights the group has brought with them into this darkness.

Literally they have brought light to spread to the Upside Down, which in turn spreads it right back to them. They are the lightbringers, they are the beacons, the light in the dark, the hope. And Robin says it all: it feels kinda good. To bring the light, to touch the light.

Like GOD I just love everyone's relationship to the light in this show, and particularly this season. I hope they keep going with it.

zuko and azula from avatar and sharpay and ryan from high school musical are EXACTLY the same character types (gay antagonistic brother-sister duo in which the sister is the more dominant and talented one and the brother is a better person who helps the heroes in the end) except zuko and azula are dialled as far to goth as possible and sharpay and ryan are dialled as far to prep as possible. miles and franziska from ace attorney are directly in the middle of this spectrum, as extremely edgy preps

twenty years across the sea

will gets attacked by this girl who hasn’t bathed in days and introduces herself as lyra silvertongue and she has a shapeshifting animal friend called a demon and she says she’s looking for ‘special dust’ and she doesn’t know what a refrigerator is or what a can of coke is or an omelette or baked beans and she licks raw egg and keeps talking about how in her world servants do the cooking and this all happens within like ten minutes and william parry, a twelve-year-old from our world, just goes “this might as well happen”

There is literally nothing in nature that blooms all year long, so do not expect yourself to do so.

we are not born to die!! what are you talking about!! do you think a book begins just to finish? do you think a song opens with a beautiful chord just for it to end? you don’t read the book to finish it, you read the book to eat up the excitement and the emotions it evokes!! to learn and to digest and to fall in love and be heartbroken!! you listen to the song to dance and dance and sing your throat raw!!! to cry and smile and swell with the harmonies!! yes, we are born with the inevitable fate of death, we are mortal after all, but that is merely the finale of the play!! the final act, the closing of the curtains - we are not born to take a bow and exit stage left!! we are born to love and be joyous and yell and move and learn and cry and feelfeelfeel!!!  we are not born to die, silly, we’re born to live!!!

Have you ever written any works about that clean, empty train station Harry ended up in? Or rather, what that place may have looked like for other people?

Ginny woke up with a gasp that felt like sandpaper shoved down her throat. Her lungs brimmed with rock and cold water, with the thick musty smell of snake.

She inhaled again and it was softer– she blinked her eyes open as the world rearranged itself. Mildew and stone gave way to the scent of sun-warmed grass. Apple blossoms. Branches cut the sky into shards of blue. 

She had learned how to fly in this orchard. She had stolen her brothers’ brooms out of the shed and practiced when no one was watching her. She knew this view–lying on the ground, looking up–because she had laid out here in the shade on hot summer days, because she had fallen off brooms and bruised herself all over, again and again, knocked all the air out of her lungs.  Ginny sat up. 

-

Ginny sat up. Her mother put a mug of tea down in front of her. Ginny wobbled where she sat and clutched at the rough edge of the kitchen table. 

“Drink your tea,” said Molly. 

“Mum,” she said. “I think I’ve been hurting people.” The Burrow’s kitchen was sunlit and scrubbed clean behind Molly. 

“Of course you wouldn’t, sweetheart,” said Molly. 

“Mum,” said Ginny. “There was blood on my robes.“ 

“We’ve all killed a few chickens in our time,” said Molly. 

“How did I get home?” She wrapped her hands around the steaming mug. It was cold against her palms, wet and gritty. There was dirt under her nails. She shivered. “I was at Hogwarts.“ 

"It’s not going to be easy,” Molly said. “He’ll tell you that, someday– the choice between what is right and what is easy. Isn’t that interesting? That doing the right thing is always so damn hard.” Molly put the tea kettle back on the stove. Her apron was thick beige canvas, well-used. “But you won’t really be listening. Because a boy will just have died, and you’ll be thinking about that. About whether or not he had a choice.”

“Who’s dying?” Ginny said. “Who’s going to die?" 

"No one you know well,” Molly said. “It’s alright. No one important to you. Someone very important to other people, but, of course, everyone is. And no, he won’t have had a choice. Right, or easy. But you do." 

-

Bill was trying to brush her hair. It was tangled at the back of her skull, matted, but his hands were very gentle. The chair she sat in creaked under her, old, in need of repairs like everything the Weasleys had ever owned. Sunlight dripped down through the leaves of the orchard. Bill had been the one who taught her to undo the lock on the broom shed door. 

"You haven’t done this since I was little,” she said. 

“You’re still little,” Bill said. His voice was younger, squeakier, and when she tipped her head back she saw his chin smooth and unstubbled, his hair still short and neat, his ear unpierced. 

“I miss you,” she said. “You’re going to leave. You’re going to go on adventures and forget to write home and forget to visit." 

"I’ll visit,” said Bill. 

“Not enough,” she said. “I’m glad you grew your hair out, though. It looks good. Mum doesn’t get it, but it looks more like you." 

Her skull was cradled in his hands, still tipped back, looking up at him. 

"You’re not really here,” she said. 

“No,” he agreed. “You’re all alone. You’re on the floor of the Chamber, can’t you tell?" 

Ginny touched her robes. They were cold and damp, sticking to her spine. Moldy water dripped from her hem onto the dry dirt of the orchard. 

-

"You’re just embarrassing us,” said Percy. He was fussing with his robes, picking lint off them. A sunbeam came through the kitchen window and draped itself around his shoulders. 

Ginny swallowed. “You don’t mean that.” She looked around the kitchen, but it was empty. Mum and her teapot weren’t anywhere. 

“Can you imagine how Mum and Dad will feel?” Percy said. “When it comes out their baby girl has been strangling chickens and killing Mudbloods?”

“No one died,” she whispered. “And don’t say that word." 

"C'mon, Ginevra, no one died but they were meant to. A camera, a mirror, a ghost, a puddle– the Mudbloods got lucky." 

Her whisper shrank and shrank. "Don’t say that word." 

"Mudbloods? Why? You wrote it on the wall in blood.” His face twisted, sneering, twisted and twisted– she had never seen Percy’s face skew that far. She didn’t think faces could move like that. She didn’t think they should. She squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ve been trying to kill people all year, and you haven’t even managed one,” said the thing with Percy’s voice, the voice he used to tell first years to knot their ties properly. “Embarrassing. Maybe tonight you’ll finally get it right." 

"You’re not really here,” she said. “This isn’t real. This is a dream, it’s all in my head, you’re not really here." 

"Of course it’s all in your head,” Percy said, or something that had once looked like Percy said. She wasn’t opening her eyes to see. “Why would that mean it isn’t real?”

-

“Welsh Greens are my favorite dragon,” said Charlie. Ginny pried her eyes open. Charlie smiled at her from across the kitchen table. Her tea was still gone. Percy was gone. The sunlight had faded to pale morning light. She was shivering. 

“I try not to play favorites,” he said. “You know, but sometimes you just gotta admit things to yourself.”

“Charlie, I think I’m dying.” She gripped the edge of the rough kitchen table and it bit into her palms. 

“They’re just so elegant,” Charlie said. “The first time I saw one fly. Do you remember? No, you weren’t born yet, I think. But Dad got suspended for a month, though Mum and Dad didn’t tell us that part–something with Lucius Malfoy–but he had a month off so we went to stay with that old friend of Mum’s in Newport. Right near the preserve. And we went out into it, and the twins kept trying to run off, and Bill spent all his time reading those adventure books he liked so much then, but we saw dragons. A Green sunning, across a gorge. One flying, almost directly over us. And I knew, right then, what I wanted to do with my life." 

"I think it was Lucius who put the diary in my textbook,” she said. “Why would he do that? Why did I write in it? Why did Tom make it? Why did I write back?" 

"See this?” said Charlie, rolling up a sleeve. Two long jagged lines of scar tissue bulged down his forearm, wrapping around it. “Poor thing got stuck in a trap and nicked me when I was getting it loose. Damned poachers." 

"Charlie, I think I hurt people.”

“And here,” said Charlie. He untucked his shirt and showed her a big shiny burn that went all up and down his leftside ribs and hip. “Healing skin,” he said. “It’s the weirdest thing.”

-

“We prank Filch and Mrs. Norris all the time,” said George. He was sitting in a tree in the orchard, the way the twins had used to before they got too big for the fragile branches. “But Merlin’s beard, Gin, never like that." 

Ginny sat cross-legged in the grass, picking stalks and trying to weave a crown. "Do you think Mrs. Norris’ll be okay?" 

"And Justin?” said George. “He’s a little twerp, but my god. We could have helped you put cayenne in his oatmeal or something, come on." 

"It wasn’t me,” said Ginny. “I didn’t mean to." 

"Okay, was it not you, or did you not mean to?” said George. “Those are two different excuses.”

-

“Never trust something if you can’t see where it puts its brain,” Arthur said. Her father was under the car. She couldn’t see him from the mid-chest, up. She couldn’t see his face.

-

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” Ron was lying on his back on his bed and she was laying belly-down on the floor, coloring. The ghoul in the attic banged pipes– angry, desperate sounds resounding like they were in an empty, vaulted space that swallowed up echoes and spat them back. 

“I wrote back,” she said. 

“Yeah, and? Plenty of people have penpals. That’s all you did. You were lonely. Don’t you think I get it? We’re the last ones, you and me. The point where people have seen so many Weasley kids they stop bothering to learn our names. I know.”

“I should’ve known,” she said. She rolled over onto her back, her hair tangling with her colored pencils. It sounded like the ghoul had maybe broken a pipe– a violent hissing shook the room. “Never trust something if you can’t see where it keeps its brain." 

"That’s stupid,” said Ron, sitting up, leaning over so she could see the profile of his long nose, his flop of red hair. There was a spreading stain on the ceiling above him.

“Dad says that." 

"Well Dad’s stupid sometimes. What does where something keeps its brain have to do with anything? Somebody put that diary in your stuff. Someone made that diary– and they kept their brain right in their skull, just like us." 

"So it’s ‘never trust anyone’?” Hissing, snarling, metal on stone, the drip of water. Her skull pressed into the hard floor, too heavy to lift. The noise rose and rose, but she could hear Ron’s voice just fine. 

He shrugged, lanky shoulders bobbing. “I dunno. Maybe it’s ‘do your best.’ I dunno. You’re eleven. Why do you have to be thinking about stuff like this?”

“You’re twelve. Why are you?”

“Yeah, well, I helped fight You-Know-Who in my first year." 

Ginny curled her fingers into her dark robes. She had had to throw away the ones she’d killed the roosters in. She’d never learned Mum’s cleaning spells well enough for that. 

"You could, too,” Ron said. The stain on the ceiling kept spreading, white plaster going dark. “You did. Fight You-Know-Who, your first year.” Water dripped onto her forehead. 

“How?” she said. “I helped him. Tom was in my head, my hands– He was–" 

"You tried to tell people.”

“I should’ve made them listen,” she said. 

“You can’t make people listen,” said Ron. 

“What can I do, then?” she said. 

“Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, wake up, come on, Ginny, wake up, Harry why is she so cold.”

-

“I’m so scared, Mum,” she said. The tea was steaming but her hands were shaking against cold ceramic. “I think I’ve been hurting people." 

-

"You’ve always been able to tell us apart,” said George. The leaves on the trees rustled behind him. “We appreciate that, you know? Like, there’s some pranks we can’t play with you around, but, still, it’s nice." 

-

"You can go,” Percy said, kindly, and Ginny shivered and shivered. “You’ve always wanted to. You’ve been dreaming about running all your life. Just taking a broom and going." 

-

Apple blossoms filled the air. Dry grass tickled her cheek, the curve of her calf. Branches cut through the sky– blue, broad, endless. She could feel cold, rotting water seeping into her robes, her socks, swallowing her hands. 

-

Bang. The ghoul in the attic was hitting pipes again. Hissing. Shouts. 

-

Bang. Swinging his feet, knocking his heels against the table legs, Fred sat on the rickety table in the broom shed. He trimmed the stray broken twigs from the tail of his Cleansweep, whistling, and he didn’t look up. 

The door of the shed hung open behind Ginny, the sun at her back, the smell of apple blossoms in the air. 

"If you’re going to steal our brooms,” Fred said. “You could at least help with maintenance, you know." 

"Why are you the last one?” she said. He had stopped whistling, but the sound kept going, ricocheting off the walls. “Why weren’t you with George?”

“We don’t do everything together,” said Fred. He looked up from the broom and he was smiling. “He’s going to do a lot of things without me, one day.”

“Where am I?” she said. “What is this? This isn’t home." 

"Isn’t it?” Fred said. He was smiling and she wanted him to stop. “You see, Ginny, you get a choice. Not everyone gets a choice, but you do. This is a place where people wait,” he said. “This is a place where they get to decide. To go forward or to go back." 

"What if I don’t want to go back?”

“Then you take one of these brooms, Gin, and you just go.” He stood up, holding the broom loosely in his hand. “You used to dream about it, remember? When no one was paying attention to you, or when they were paying too much, or when Ron broke your favorite porcelain doll. You thought about sneaking out here, and taking a broom, and just going. The first time you snuck out here and stole my broom, that’s what you meant to do. Run away. Find a circus, or an adventure, a new life.”

“But I came back." 

He shrugged. "You ran out of the cookies you’d packed. And it got cold." 

"It’s getting colder,” she said. “Fred, I’m so cold." 

"You won’t get cold, if you go. You won’t run out of anything.”

“What’ll I find?” The sky out the window was blue. It went forever. 

“I don’t know, kiddo. Not yet.”  

-

Bill was brushing her hair in the orchard. It didn’t hurt, but she knew it should. She tipped her head back. The sky was blue. She let him hold the weight of her skull in his two big hands, his rings digging into her scalp. 

Charlie was telling her about dragons. Percy was picking lint off her shoulder and telling her to get some sleep. George was picking dead leaves off the apple tree and dropping them on her head. 

Ron laid on his back in his bedroom and water dripped down from the ceiling. The ghoul was shrieking, the pipes were hissing. The stain spread and spread and she watched it go. She couldn’t lift her head. 

-

“You have a choice,” Arthur said. He had oil on his cheek from fixing a car he swore he never meant to drive. 

“It’s getting colder." 

"I know, baby." 

-

The handle of Fred’s broom was trapped between them, digging into her ribs, bruising her collarbone. She twisted her hands in the back of his shirt and buried her face in the front of it. Fred was taller than he should be. His chin was bristly with a beard he shouldn’t be able to grow this well, not yet. 

"I miss you,” she said. “You’re going to leave." 

"Are you?” he said. 

She gripped the back of his shirt tight. She could smell the orchard through the open door. She was crying. Her tears were the only warm things in the whole world. “No,” she whispered. 

“It won’t be easy,” Fred said, his chin pressed to the top of her head, because he was taller, he was so much taller than he should be. She cried and the stain spread through his shirt. “But it will be worth it." 

-

Apple blossoms and old stone. Snakes in the dry grass. This was where she learned to fly. She had taught herself. 

"Wake up,” said Ron. “Harry, why is she so cold? Wake up, Ginny, you’ve got to wake up." 

The blue sky was cut into a hundred shattered pieces. 

She opened her eyes. 

May the 4th be with You: A Poem for Star Wars Day