Prompt: You're a child's imaginary friend. You're fading away.

I used to be so bright, like a shining galaxy of a million billion stars, dazzling in the sea of infinite space, imagination.

Now look at me. A shadow. A wisp.

I don't resent him for it. I miss him, like a constant ache in my heart, like a bullet wound.

We were young. I remember the day I was formed, pulled from his heart, gleaming with adventures-to-be. First we played, constantly, splashing in bathtubs, although he'd always blame the messy wet floor on me, or reaching our bare toes as high as we could to the sky, pretending to be airplanes zooming up to the Moon or Mars, where vicious aliens waited for us, holding their zap-guns threateningly. He always made me be the aliens, but I didn't mind.

And then the living room floor would become a roiling pit of lava, and we'd leap from cushion to cushion, feigning not to notice when a little toe would brush against the ground, because who needed toes, anyways?

School was a constant conversation, where we'd chatter endlessly while Mrs. Prewett or whoever the new delightfully dull teacher was would drone on about grammar and numbers. We talked about baseball and television and how cars could go. He said magic, I said gasoline. We talked about boring teachers and friends and the gross cafeteria food and how the lunch lady was actually an alien from planet Zok, which was later confirmed when we went on a secret mission in the backyard and found where she had landed on Earth - some scattered charcoal briquettes on the ground.

And reading... Reading was like painting another world with sweeping, carefree brushstrokes, diving into a swimming pool of color and light and whimsy never before seen. I danced in the shadows of the pages, behind the letters, in the spine of the book, with building ecstasy at every page turn. Reading was when I was truly free to burn with all of my brightness, to dance.

At night we would stay awake and talk until the other Zok aliens told us firmly to go to sleep, and when they closed the door we would stick our tongues out at them and then whisper again, but more quietly. We wondered if the mystery meat the Zok Queen cooked tonight was fried giraffe and if we could escape from school. We puzzled over the mysteries of elevators and microwaves. But most of all we dreamed of the stars, of my homeland, and of his future.

But one day I was dimmer. I didn't shine so brightly, and when he began to read again I didn't dance as quickly. The change was bad, I wanted to go back. But something told me I never would.

At first I didn't know why I wasn't as radiant as before. He still talked with me, still walked with me on the way to school, still shot peas out of his nose to make me laugh - and I could never not laugh at his peas-in-the-nose trick - and I was confused. We were the same, our bond was just as strong as ever. Why did I change? Was I not good enough for him? Did he need a new companion? Was I being replaced?

Then one day I shone with a little less light. I kept up our chatter, our little games, but it never would come back. My light, my precious imagination, gone.

He had friends to talk to now, more than me. I was always hearing about things secondhand. How Jeff had stolen an eraser and pulled Tina's hair. How there was a new show on television coming out he wanted to see. How he had gotten an A-plus on his math test, and that I only heard from the loud boasting of the Zok Queen... Who he now called 'Mom.'

Less time was spent diving into the rich mysteries of books, and more was spent staring away at the television screen, watching comic characters getting beaten over the head with mallets. He always laughed, and asked me if I liked it, and I said I did. The lights of the screen soon became brighter than my own light. I was fading.

Impossible. He wouldn't just leave me. He wouldn't just... Go.

Our conversations turned from aliens and outer space to sports cars, sports stars, and a new topic - girls, who he suddenly had taken an interest in. The times we had to talk about girls was almost insufferable for me, hearing him monologue on and on about Tricia this or Tiana that. But at least we were talking, and that made me happy, to hear his voice directed only to me.

But of course, it didn't last. Soon his friends were talking about girls, too, and he would go to them for advice.

We were still friends, right? Still close, but maybe not as close as we had been. I was still there for him, ready to console him when he was knocked down, to bandage a knee and say a kind word. But was that my only job, a fallback?

Soon his days are filled with school, homework, and television. He plays games in his free time, both real and electronic, and suddenly I long for the days when we would read for hours, dancing furiously through the pages, feeling the disappointment of closing a book you've enjoyed for so long at last. Do all good things have to end? Were books a clue to my ultimate demise?

Don't say that. He still cares about you. He still talks to you. Just wait.

But we stop talking. I can't even recall our last conversation, shrouded in the feeble light that I've become, barely a glimmer, if even that. One puff of a breath could extinguish me.

But I wait. I watch. More school, lots of it. More friends, more mistakes, more lessons learned. While I wish I could still guide him, still offer him my advice, I feel like I've watered a flower that's now begun to sprout and grow. And grow he does - pride fills my heart every time I see him, every time he hits a home run and the crowd goes wild, every time he scores well on a test, every time he gets up after he falls. I wish we could speak, so much so that it hurts me to wish it. I wish to dance again, even for a moment.

He can't have forgotten me. I'm still here.

I have not forgotten him.

And still more school... I laugh sometimes, thinking of what he would say when we were still so close, going on about lunch ladies from Zok. His classes are difficult but he pushes through, and with every growing second I feel as though I will burst with affection for this brilliant boy, this brilliant man, even if he can no longer see me, if my voice has long since faded into the back recesses of his mind.

A job. Responsibilities. For once in my life I cannot see his whole day, just flashes. Buttoning a white shirt. Papers and pens, computers at desks. Raised voices, soft voices. A home, an apartment. The flashes are brief and fill me with fear. What am I missing? What do I not see? Does this mean the end of me?

Perhaps.

And I have one day in full clarity before the end.

He's nervous, fiddling with his tuxedo sleeves, with people, all his age, a few I even recognize, encouraging him, making jokes. He laughs and nods, but I can tell they don't help. Anticipation, anxiety... I reach out to him, but as usual there's nothing there.

I can help you, I want to say, just talk to me. We can be like we used to! Remember the lunch lady from planet Zok? Remember when you hit your first baseball? Remember when you rode your bike down the street and hit the neighbor's cat? We had such good times together... Why are you so far away from me now?

The doors creak open and there's an aisle, flanked with pews, and I recognize the scene easily enough: a wedding.

And I could not be prouder.

He waits for her by the altar, and when I see his face in the fading light of the church windows I realize what kind of a man he has become, from a gap-toothed kid catching rolly-pollys to a grown man, strong and firm and powerful. And I don't care if I fade away to nothingness, because I have done my job.

Then she arrives, her delicate features shrouded by a sheer veil, and I feel connected to him, feel the swell of emotion rise in his chest when he sees her. I approve, I think as I see the woman walk down the aisle. They reach each other, speak their vows, then he lifts her veil and leans in, and then

Nothing.

I have been nothing for so long.

At first I tried to search for the way out. Wandering for eons, ages, clinging to the good memories like lifelines. I have no radiance. I am nothing now.

Am I used to this new life? Maybe. Endless eternity for a few short years. But oh, what years they were. And I tell myself constantly: if he is happy, it is all worth it.

"Daddy?"

What? What's this? I've never heard a voice?

"Daddy?"

"Yeah? What is it, buddy?"

It can't be. After all my years of waiting, after all my pain, it can't be him.

"Who is it?"

"That's my best friend, buddy. And he's going to be your best friend, too."

And then I burst out from the darkness of imagination, with the luster and luminosity of all things bright, and see my new child, my new 'him.'

Together we will shine like the sun.