"It's always been bright."

"That's not what I mean."

He stood beside her and looked up. The stars were there, faint in the glow of New York but present as always, indifferent in the way that only distant stars can be, burning their fuel without understanding that anyone was watching.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"I'll keep measuring," she said. "That's what I've always done. I'll keep measuring until the instruments stop working or the sun stops burning, whichever comes first."

"And then?"

She smiled the way that people smile when they've already said goodbye and haven't told anyone yet. "Then I'll go home and look at the sun one more time and remember that it was once just a star and that stars, even when they die, give us everything they have to give. Heat. Light. The thing that makes life possible on a small rocky planet that orbits them without really understanding what they are."

They didn't marry. They didn't run away together. They went back inside and drank champagne and danced and pretended that the sun was just another thing that could be postponed, because that's what people do when the world is ending and tomorrow might be the last day they have to pretend.

The music was beautiful. The champagne was cold. And the sun, the sun was burning brighter than it ever had before, and it didn't know it was dying, and that was the most beautiful thing of all.

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