Shooting stars are like human desire. In fleeting blinks they disappear. It was 1872, in a poor Greek village on the island of Poros. A star bleeding colours of spider silk and glistening tears fell from the heavens, crashing into a young astronomer’s observatory. Every man and woman in the village was in awe of the star's beauty, captivated by the angelic aura it projected. The young astronomer, who wished for nothing more than to see the stars shine each night, took the star and returned it to its rightful place in the midnight sky. 

“You selfish buffoon!”, roared hordes of men and women in disgust, “Think of the money that star was worth. We would have finally had everything this crumby village can never provide us with!”

Exiling him for his selfish behaviour, the villagers tossed the young astronomer across the village border. They deemed his return to the village punishable by twelve lashings. As the boy stood there in the rain, saturated, with matted hair and clothes caked in foul-smelling mud, he declared with repulsion, 

“There is a stardust stain on the floor of my observatory. If you can find it, sell it for your petty money.” 

Knobbly knees quivering, the boy whipped around on his heel, marching in defiance back towards the leering villagers. He huffed himself onto the crumbling stone wall at the village border. Head held high, his gaze unwavering, the young boy set his boney jaw in a sharp jut and vowed, 

“I will sit here till the dust is found and give you proof it is real. I will not find joy in your suffering, only pity for the blind puppets you are” 

Every man and woman in the village went mad with haste and greed, shoving and stampeding towards the observatory to find their priceless stardust stain.

After weeks of unsuccessful searching the villagers feeble attempts grew with desperation. Smashed windows littered the observatory’s stone floor, not a single piece of furniture was left unturned. 

“It isn’t there, it was never there!” 

That’s what the men and women cursed at him, grovelling at his feet and begging the boy to just show them the dust. Yet the boy insisted the star had left a stain on the mouldy stone floor of his ruined observatory saying, 

“If you want the stardust, you will not find it. When you no longer seek it, you will see it.” Refusing to believe all hope was lost, the villagers tried to bargain and reason with the boy, though he wouldn’t budge, insisting his words rang true.

So they searched. They searched … and searched… and searched for a millennia. Generation after generation, all to no avail. Until one day, a young girl was asked to continue the search. She looked on quizzically and pointed to a stain on the floor of her crumbling home.

“But it’s right there,” she said, “It’s been there the whole time.” 

For a millennia the stain had been right beneath their noses and they couldn’t see it. Yet this uncorrupted, innocent young girl had found the stardust stain. As she pointed at the stain, her parents saw it. Dancing in the golden dawn rays flooding the old observatory, there was indeed a star dust stain. Entranced, her parents wanted nothing more than to watch it twinkle, mesmerised by its beauty, until the realisation that they had found this historic monument hit them. They dashed down the uneven street of the town yelling, 

“We found it! The stain, the stain, we found it!”

Whoops of glee came from every house on the block, adults scrambling towards the observatory to see for themselves, like kids in a candy shop. When they tried to find the stardust again it was gone. As if it had never been there, a whisper of a phantom in the wind.

Until she was old enough to understand the ways of the human world, the young girl saw the stardust stain every morning on the moss covered cobblestone floor of the ruined observatory. That is, until she too developed invisible bonds and became just another puppet to the stars.