no hear me out. give me a second here, history major beatrice n astrophysics major ava meet completely by chance one night late in the library where they both somehow get locked in bc no one thought to check for stragglers and they end up talking all night, tucked into the back between astronomy n anthropology. ava tells beatrice about the stars, how the cosmos flows in their veins and how the study of space is just the study of themselves, the study of how to return to the place from which they came, “it’s us who gets discovered,” she says, talking of satellites and telescopes, of the mars rovers and how they’re programmed to sing songs to themselves, love against the void. and beatrice tells ava about what it is to be human, about how the one thing that remains constant throughout the many many years is kindness, about how the first hint of civilisation was that healed femur, “connection is the most important thing,” she says, talking of music and scriptures, of how stories are just a palimpsest of memories, of the longevity of olive trees, how you can stand under the branches of one and know that two hundred years ago someone else did the same, how love echoes constantly backwards and forwards. the next morning when the library is unlocked again they stumble into the closest open cafe, order the biggest coffee they’ve got, and ava has a seminar to attend and beatrice has a lecture to go to but they exchange numbers and a handshake that turns into a hug and that’s how it begins.
