A Beautiful Nothing

“Isn’t it beautiful?” the boy breathed, staring up at the darkened sky, a nothingness reflected in his one eye.

His butler seemed slightly unimpressed, but still he looked, for the sake of amusing his master, to see what had so captivated him. And his breath caught in his throat, just a little, at seeing the pitch black above him. 

“Is this what you’ve been…looking for, all this time?”

The boy only laughed, a light laugh, a twinkling laugh, rather like those nonexistent stars. And his butler could only take his answer how he would.

“It feels so…empty,” he murmured, staring at the darkness.

“But if you look hard enough in the darkness, surely you can find something,” the boy replied. “Look! What’s that there?”

The butler stared in the direction the boy was pointing, but he saw nothing, so he merely chuckled and said, “I’m afraid I can’t see what you see…”

“Then perhaps my losing an eye was a good thing,” the boy said softly, lowering his gaze. “Perhaps a very good thing.”