The cluttered, cramped room suddenly depressed her. Notes and books and miscellaneous items were piled untidily on the large desk. She was fairly sure there was the remains of at least one meal in there, but didn’t really have the urge to search it out. She let her eyes rove over the rest of the room - the ornaments clustered and crammed on the mismatched dressers, the faded roses on the fraying carpet, the huge, gold-framed, smeary mirror. Her bed was unmade, her bag and uniform lying in the corner where she’d thrown them like a discarded snakeskin. Over everything lay a thick coating of dust. She coughed, reminded of it. Above the filth, smothering the walls, the ceiling, were the calm poster people, their impassivity accusing.

She sighed, began to write again. Then, swearing, she threw her pad at the floor and jumped to her feet. The thump of chair hitting floor cut off the low-voiced stream of curses. “This is your fault!” she raged at the poster people. The sheer irrationality of the thought hit her, appalled her. She flung open the door and fled.

Outside, away from the noise and the accusing stares, it was better. Here, there was only the wind and the stars. She threw herself into the tyre swing hanging from the kowhai tree with a sob of release, and set herself swaying frantically with a vicious one-footed shove, seed pods cascading down, startled by the sudden movement. The dizzying motion gradually slowed, and she looked up at the shining stars, distant, eternal, secure. She began picking them out, naming the familiar ones. Over there were Alpha Beta and Alpha Centauri. Together they made up the Pointer, so following with her eyes, she found the most familiar of all. The Aussies were wrong, she could clearly see five stars.

The wind cut through her thin jersey and she shivered, but absently, her mind busy with the sky. That red glow was Mars, and if she squinted just a little and swung herself just right, she could almost make out the yellow smudge that was Saturn. Venus was easy, and not half as much fun. The thin slice of moon she disregarded altogether.

There were more constellations, but she didn’t know any but Leo, and he wouldn’t be visible for a few hours yet. No, wait, that bright red star could be Antares, the tip of the tail of Scorpio... Twisting her head, she tried to make nearby stars into a scorpion, but finally admitted defeat. Anyway, Leo didn’t look like a lion.

The wind sliced through her again, and she reluctantly jumped off the swing, eyes still on the sky, and wandered back to the silent house. The stars had calmed her, centered her. She could face the mess again, carry on with her work.

But before she did that, she would burn the poster people.

The posters remain ^_^. The constellation that isn’t named here is the Southern Cross, which can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere. It appears on the New Zealand and Australian flag, but only four stars are on the NZ flag, while five appear on the Aussie flag. This is because we’re only supposed to be able to see four stars in NZ, which leads me to believe the flag designer never looked up at night. And yes, at times my room really is that disgusting.