"Your skin is made of stardust, supernovas and every terrible thing ever to happen." That was all that he left for me, scribbled on the back of an almost forgotten ultrasound photo. The ink had faded with age, sitting in a box for almost exactly 18 years had turned it into a muddy brown splodge that was supposed to be me, though the handwriting was as pristine as ever. As if it was cursed to remain as clear as the day I found it."Your skin is made of stardust, supernovas and every terrible thing ever to happen." The question I often found myself asking, of course, was what the fuck was that supposed to mean?Tucked away between the vintage pages of an overdue library book, the Iliad to be precise, the photo sat undiscovered for years. The book itself was buried in some forgotten box in the equally unmemorable basement that sat quietly underneath our house.With a twitch of my fingers, lit only by the waxing moon and cheap fairy lights hung lazily across my ceiling and wrapped around my bedframe, I turned the small scan in my hand once more. The perfectly quiet handwriting glared back up at me. Then, with another twitch, the words disappeared. A bad memory inked onto the underside of a photo of me. It was only a second and a twitch, and the writing was back again.We flicked our Y's and curled our S's almost exactly the same way, him and I. Letters folding in on themselves, reaching out, holding hands with their neighbours. His handwriting was on every page of the book too, the book he must have forgotten was not his. Pages filled with Y's and S's and some letters in between. Our A's look remarkably similar as well, though only as capitals.The ticking of the hallway clock broke through the persistent quiet of night, as my eyes roved over the open pages. He spelt Ὄλυμπος wrong, he always used the upper and lower cases of epsilon interchangeably, and he never even bothered to learn the uppercase for pi. It was all so… amateurish.The cool night swam down to my lungs and made my bones shiver inwardly. I had read this exact book over and over now. My retinas had absorbed the same misspellings, careless grammatical errors, and mindless commentary nearly every day for far too long. I had given myself until my 18th birthday, the remainder of my legal childhood to figure it out.To figure out what the fuck he meant. To figure out why I was every terrible thing that had ever happened.It was 90 seconds to midnight and my fingers twitched and twitched and twitched. You are every terrible thing. And twitched and twitched. You are every terrible thing.I learned Greek. And twitched and twitched. I learned the upper and lower cases of omicron and theta and tau and zeta. And twitched and twitched. I memorised ᾍδης and every epithet bestowed upon him and onto every daughter he ever had. Yet he doesn't even know what my name is.The seconds crawled closer towards midnight with broken legs. Slowly and painfully, desperately reaching out for the next day. Though, it wasn't at 90 seconds to midnight that I figured it out. I just twitched my fingers and read the words that had wormed their way under my flesh and in between every third breath I took from the first moment I had read them and realised they were made for me. Stardust, supernovas, every terrible thing.Every terrible thing. It was me in that photo. Probably around 5 months into my conception if I was correct. I was made of stardust and supernovas. All things exceptional, beautiful, unreachable, heavenbound. I was above faded polaroids and vague metaphors. I was above it all like the stars in the sky. And yet.I rocked back in my desk chair, the photo still between my fingers. Even in the mercy of the moon's light, the photo and I were both naked. Exposed skin bathing in the light of moons, stars and all the celestial bodies that did not care enough to make themselves known. All the light on me and this photo and the Iliads open pages and his perfectly neat handwriting and my dark supernova flesh.Thirty seconds to midnight and I was naked and alone and, worse of all, correct. From the moment I had read those words, I knew what they meant. The moment that I had read his notes, I knew what they meant. The moment that I had learned ancient languages and read every myth and legend, the moment that I had studied philosophers new and old, the moment I had found myself clinging onto my own mother's legs and asking why I didn't have a daddy like my half-sister or my friends or everybody I had ever met, I knew what those words meant.So when the seconds made it, pulling themselves, and me by proxy, into my very own birthday, I couldn't find the courage to be disappointed. Times up. It took seven years and I could not find a different answer to when I had first found the book, flicked through its aged pages and found a picture of myself before birth looking back up at me.The answer was really that simple I suppose.I was made of every terrible thing and my father knew that better than everyone.The tick tick ticking of the second-hand clock hung up somewhere in my hallway didn't stop. I mean, of course, it didn't. It was just another day on the Gregorian calendar, February 2nd. My 18th birthday and I was ok with that I suppose."Hmm," I frowned to myself as I closed my eyes, the moonlight filtering through my lashes. Somebody in this world loathes me and has deemed every awful thing to be my fault. I am fundamentally, physically, irreversibly bad. My dad thinks I am every terrible thing.But my dad can't even spell Ὄλυμπος.My small chuckle to myself died quickly under my breath as the usually brisk mid-winter midnight air had turned some shade of warm. Not unpleasantly so… well, maybe a little. The warmth crept up my spine, coating my vertebrae and spreading through to my ribs. The clock ticked like the dials on a gas stove, clicking into another gas mark and ramping up the heat little by little. Ironically, the heat had frozen and chilled my core, though it began to slowly burn through my body. My blood boiled its way through my veins, infecting every living part of stardust flesh. With my one free hand, I pawed at my chest to only be reminded by my palm on my bare skin that I was already naked. My nails still clawed, however, dragging pitiful harsh white lines against my black skin, failing to reach deeper. I wanted to pluck out my arteries, melt my fingers past muscle and bone, dig through my viscera and fish out every vital organ until the heat escaped.Air escaped my lungs in a cloud of white, blossoming into the night and disappearing forever. I couldn't blink or think or speak. Only my useless fingers scraped against my burning chest. I was on fire and yet there were no flames, no smoke. Burning limbs, burning organs, burning flesh.This is how supernovas die. Falling inwards on themselves endlessly until the heat recycles and sets fire to fire. Until flames encapsulate its being, its breathing, its definition. Fire upon fire upon melted skeletons. Inhaling strands of air, my eyes wouldn't close. Darting between my bare legs, desk, and the photo. Nothing was different. Strands of air, the heat death of the universe finding its origin in my blood, bare legs, desk, ultrasound, nothing was different. Frozen oxygen, boiled joints, thighs, desk, every terrible thing, nothing was different. Wheeze, heatwaves, raw skin, desk, flames.Dancing on my fingers, flames. From my own hands, flames. Physically, biologically, provably impossible flames. Real and tangible and magical.So small and sweet. Birthday candles and fireflies and things of the like. All things innocent and unharming. Simple flames, golden, as if I had taken my thumb and forefinger, reached into the sky on a clear May afternoon, and plucked a piece of the burning sun to treasure and hold. It danced between my fingers for a moment, twirling and leaping across every line in my thumbprint, fiery red hues licking at my nails. It was just a whisper of a flame, a playground secret, forgettable almost. Though it whispered, shared its secrets a little too carelessly and spreading the fire to the first thing it could see.You are made of stardust, supernovas, and every terrible thing burned before my very eyes. Crumpling into a lump of sad ashes scattered across a too-old pink rug, a brand-new desk and across my thighs. The flame died, the photo was no more and my fingers twitched.Was that-?Am I-?Am I going insane?The ashes landing on my thighs, scattering around my room like burnt snow and staining my perfectly pink rug a dirty grey, was proof enough.I am not insane, I am something else entirely. Something made of fire and brimstone, something supernatural, and something secret.Somewhere between the midnight air, my birthday morning and the searing pain, my head was clear. Without a thought, I stood, dusting ashes off of my bare leg as I wandered slowly to my bed. The fairy lights fizzled out as I turned them off with a satisfying click, a clear sign that the batteries were on their last legs. Head against a pillow, my eyes fluttered closed and I inhaled. Not just strands, but gulps of air, until I thought maybe I would never have to breathe again and maybe this was enough oxygen to last me forever and ever and ever. Enough oxygen to think maybe the atoms and bonds and quarks could be my friends, keeping me company instead of all of the question marks gathering at my feet. However, it was short-lived as I breathed out and even the oxygen had left me alone. Alone enough so that the questions would have to keep me company. The first: did I just burn that photo with my very own human hands? The second: is this magic?