A Moon Nook short story about a mole, an observatory, a painting, and one very difficult star.
The keeper of Moon Nook recorded every unusual star. And there were no ordinary ones so far. Wait! Oh yes, there were no ordinary ones indeed.
Mr Oswin was an astronomer, a painter, and a mole. The combination had proved surprisingly useful, particularly the last qualification, as he could conduct his observations without being distracted by the scenery. Birds mostly disagreed with that conclusion though.
He painted the stars as well as recording them, all from Moon Nook, which was named for the moon that peered in at him through all its windows. Not star charts, mind you. Proper portraits, with oils, brushes and an unreasonable number of small canvases stacked against the walls.
His collection was quite extraordinary.
One resembled a staircase viewed through deep water, another the cross-section of a mountain folded in the wrong direction. A third was particularly troublesome: it looked exactly like a room with no walls, furnished with a single enormous window. Mr Oswin had spent considerable time trying to establish which side of the window he ought to paint. And this was not all- for there were stack upon stack of paintings and every one of those extraordinary.
His greatest difficulty, however, was finding a suitable subject for his latest exhibition.
He wanted to paint an ordinary star.
Just one. A perfectly unremarkable, unpretentious star. No peculiar shapes, no eccentric luminosity, no unexpected appendages. Something one might hang above a fireplace without having to explain it to visitors. A dot of a star, a sphere, a monochromatic daub of a color. That ought to be his masterpiece. Something he imagined the folks to look at and say, “now that’s an ordinary star!”
He had spent countless nights searching. Well, not countless, but they say Mr Oswin could count to infinity, and he had very nearly got there, if only infinity had kept still. Silly infinity.
On one fine night, when he was humming around with his copy of “Delicious Smells of Stars”, he noticed something unusual in the skies. Could it be? Could it just be!? He polished his brass lens and looked through the telescope, adjusting a million knobs with the greatest of precision. And yes, he had found a promising candidate. It was small, white and perfectly round.
Excited, and enthralled, with his tongue pinned between his teeth to stop it wandering, he set up his easel, mixed his paints and began.
But then something happened that very nearly made him sip his paint water instead of his tea. Unfortunately, the star seemed to have developed a second shadow, and he was not yet halfway through the portrait. The daub required more daubing.
And before frowning Mr Oswin could adjust to this new development, a third shadow appeared.
“Cat’s whiskers!” Mr Oswin shouted, a rare profanity. But he was not to give up- not now. This had to be his ordinary star, shadows be cat-whiskered.
By morning, the painting had become a rather convincing tortoise carrying two smaller tortoises, all looking equally disappointed. It did not look at all like a star. Self-contentedly, Mr Oswin stepped back and admired his work. “There it is,” he said. “Look at this masterpiece of an ordinary star.” Then, almost guiltily, he looked around with a sheepish grin to realize and remember there were on Moon Nook walls observing him. Even Moon had retired for the day.
Mr Oswin put down his brush.
He considered the matter for some more time, then wrote “Tortoise Star, Perfectly Ordinary” on the back of the canvas.
The exhibition opened the following month. It was very well attended, and all but one visitor congratulated Mr Oswin on his ordinary star portrait. Now this one visitor dressed in black overalls under a black trench coat, with a black cloak flowing behind him lingered in shadows. He would have been scary if not for his 3-foot stature.
Mr Oswin approached the visitor rather confidently and, with a friendly wave, said, “What do you think, oh most curious of my friends? Should this masterpiece of an ordinary star be placed on the mantle of a museum, or should we lock it somewhere safe from prying eyes, to preserve it?”
A deep voice answered from somewhere in the folds of black cloth, “That’s no ordinary star”. It was loud enough for everyone in the gallery to hear and turn around with big ‘o’s on their mouths.
Mr Oswin was deeply offended. He shook with embarrassment, then offence, then something that was mostly paint. All he could do was make funny sounds for a few moments, and then “But. You. Hey. But how!?”.
The visitor in black, simply turned around and walked out into a rather bright evening. His three shadows followed soon there after.
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P.S. Years later, the painting sits in a stack of paintings in a dusty nook of Moon Nook. Legend has it that whenever the moon peeks through the window, which it always does, the painting turns into an ordinary star for the span of exactly one mole blink.