Author's Note: Hey everyone! A brief note about this story- this takes place after the S3E20 episode "Just Friends," but the episodes following it do NOT happen in this fic. With that said, I hope you enjoy. :D

Two weeks. It had been two weeks. Fourteen days. Three-hundred and thirty six hours. Twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty seconds. But it's not like she was counting or anything.

It had become incredibly difficult for Star to pass the time these days. She knew, of course, that the beginning of any relationship was bound to be like this. Of course Marco was bound to spend all of his time with Jackie- that was the way things were supposed to go, right? Well, even with that knowledge, it didn't make things any easier.

She longed for things to go back to the way they used to be, back to the Friendship Tuesday movie marathons, snuggled up next to him on the couch during the unholy hours of the night, room aglow with the cold blue light of the television screen. She missed when they would go dimension hopping, seeing whatever chaotic, dumb fun they could launch themselves into. She missed learning about all the strange Earth rituals of his people, visiting all sorts of kooky places and eating bizarre foods and laughing at every joke along the way (even when she didn't really understand them).

She missed Marco.

The evening was growing dark now, the last rays of the California sunset dispersing across the sky. He wouldn't be home for a long time. His dates with Jackie tended to last forever , and he was always exhausted by the end of it. He often came in and went straight to bed afterward, no time to entertain Star's silly whims.

She sighed and made her way over to her Interdimensional Mirror. Pulling back the velvety curtains, she glared at her tired expression in the reflection.

"Call Mom," she instructed.

It didn't take long for her mother to pick up- that was Moon, after all. Ever reliable and always responsible,

"Oh, hello, Star. What are you up to tonight?"

"Hey mom," she sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "Just a little bored is all. What are you and dad doing?"

"What excellent timing you have! If you're bored, why don't you come join us at the festival?"

"Festival? For what?"

"Oh, darling, you didn't forget what today was, did you?"

Star broke into a cold sweat. What had she forgotten this time?! Oh no, it wasn't anyone's birthday, was it?! Mewnipendence Day was last month, the family reunion wasn't until the end of the year, Song Day was a month or two out, and it definitely wasn't National Barbecue Night (she'd never forget that one!).

She mentally ran through the list of Mewnian holidays. It was increasingly difficult as she had to sort through her newly learned list of Earth holidays, too- some of which were so weird that she had to question whether or not Marco had been pulling her leg. I mean, come on, a day dedicated just to stuffing yourself full of turkey and simultaneously saying 'thank you?!' She hadn't experienced that one yet, but it sounded really confusing. How many times were you supposed to say 'thank you?' Was it a competition to see who could do the most thanking? When did the thanking end?!

"The Wish Festival" her mother read the cluelessness on her face and politely reminded her. "Etheria the First's Meteor Shower passes through tonight. Remember?"

Oh. That. Her parents were probably getting ready to go on a date, then. It was sort of a romantic festival, after all. Throngs of adoring couples would make their way to the Mewnian plains tonight to secure a good viewing spot. That was the last thing she needed to see right now. She was already lonely, and she didn't want to feel like garbage on top of that.

"You should join us, Star." Her mom was using that special voice again, the one that was gentle and cautious and desperate to be supportive. "We'd love to have you."

"Thanks but no thanks, mom. I've got plans already."

"Oh! With Marco?"

Moon's eyes beamed with a glimmer of hope. She had a little insight about what had been going on with her daughter.

It was as though Star herself had been the last to realize her own crush- or perhaps it had just been Moon's keen, motherly intuition. When Star had called one evening for the regular update and informed her that Jackie and Marco were now a couple, the heartbreak hiding behind her daughter's forced smile had been overtly obvious. Now, Moon wanted nothing more than to help ease her daughter out of this heartbreak and return her to the bouncy, bubbly, bundle of energy she'd always been.

"Um, nah." Star's gaze dropped to the rug as she awkwardly rubbed the back of her head. "He's out to a movie with Jackie tonight. I think they went to see Trains 5- which is ridiculous, if you ask me, considering how much Marco hated Trains 4. Well, the third one was pretty good, since it did have Justin Towers as a voice actor-"

"Alright, dear. Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us."

"Thanks, mom."

The call ended and Star's familiar reflection faded back into the mirror. She supposed she could call up Ponyhead or Kelly or Janna if she really needed some company, but why bother? She felt like a depressed, soggy piece of trash right now anyway. Maybe wallowing in her lonely angst was just what the doctor ordered.

She crept down the stairs and headed to the kitchen. There wasn't much left in the fridge- Angie and Rafael usually waited until the end of the week to go grocery shopping. A few cans of fizzy pop and a bowl of stale tortilla chips would have to do for now.

She went back to her room, turned out all of the lights, and plopped down on her bed. Taking her dimensional scissors in hand, she swung the blade through the air in front of her and opened a portal to the sky back home. The view was courtesy of the balcony right outside her castle home's bedroom.

Nothing like watching the meteor shower from the comfort of both your bedrooms, she thought. A little smile played at the corners of her mouth. Every now and then, she did miss home.

The sounds of her quiet chip munching and soda sipping were the only noises to fill the dark room. The faint echo of the festivities going on below could occasionally be heard, but from this high up in her castle home, you really had to strain to hear it.

As she gazed through the portal at the curtain of stars that hung above her homeland, she thought of Marco. She recalled all of the endless hours of fun spent with him. It didn't matter where they went or what they did; they always had a great time. When she was with him, she could have fun in places she never, ever thought she could. School, crappy convenience stores, even Saint Olga's. Maybe that's why she fell in love with him.

He was kind, smart, and always patient. She was a handful and boy, did she know it. But that never scared Marco away. He was the calm to her storm, the rational to her irrational in all things.

She missed him deeply.

From the glow of the portal, the meteor shower had begun. Dazzling streaks of sparkling purples and shimmering blues shot through the black of night. They painted the distant skies with beautiful light, and Star knew that somewhere down there, her parents and friends and subjects were watching with great fascination. She squeezed her eyes shut and cast her wish into the night, for tradition's sake.

Please, let me be selfish and have Marco back. I wish for this horrible, empty feeling to go away.

After watching the meteor shower for a while, her lips stretched into a yawn. The chip bowl was empty, save for a few spare crumbs, and she had depleted her soda stash completely. It was time to call it a night. She closed the portal and snuggled down into bed.

Her eyelids fluttered open. A glance at the clock on her nightstand revealed that she was deep within the late, late hours of the night. She had been sleeping easy, lost in a happy dream, until she was awoken by that awful buzzing sound.

Still disoriented from her sleepy haze, she tried to locate the sort of that horrible static noise. She had half expected to find a monster in her room but there was none to be found. She was all alone in here- save for that noise. It was cold and sharp sounding, persistently loud, and REALLY annoying. Like, swarm-of-angry-Mewni-hornets annoying. The hums and clicks and buzzes were growing louder and louder by the second.

A loud pop made her jump (and made her ears hurt even worse- ugh!). It had come from...underneath the sheets?

She flipped back the covers to reveal the source of the disturbance. There, in its usual place, was her wand. She liked having it as close as possible to her when she slept, just in case of a surprise attack. Maybe keeping it next to her in bed was a little overboard, but when you had hordes of monster enemies constantly clawing for the chance to use your magic, you tend to be a little extreme.

Something was definitely not right. Her wand was acting strange- well, stranger than usual. She had seen it do a lot of peculiar things lately, but never before had she seen it act like this. The half of the star-shaped amulet that was encrusted in the wand's center was pulsating in a wild, random arrangement of colours. Tiny crackles and pops of stray magic shot out of the center and dissipated into the air. When she grabbed the wand's rod, Star drew her hand back in surprise. It was...hot?

This was definitely bad. Was her wand overheating? Even during her most intensive battles and training sessions, it had never once overheated before. She considered firing a test Narwhal Blast just to see if it had any effect on her spells, but decided against it. If her wand exploded in the middle of the night because of a careless test fire, she didn't want to have to explain that to her parents. But what was she to do?

She wished Glossaryck was here. Maybe he'd know what was going on. Or maybe he'd just be vague and mysterious, as always. The dude was always was kind of a butthead.

The wand began vibrating violently, shaking Star to her core. Her startled hands lost their grip, and the wand slipped through her fingers like butter and fell to the floor with a loud thud. The chaos grew wilder still, and when it started shaking and flashing and sparking all at once, Star didn't need Glossaryck to know this much: the thing was about to blow. She kicked the wand as powerfully as she could and sent it flying across the room. With a yelp, she dropped to the ground and took cover.

She didn't see the catastrophic boom, but she certainly heard it.

Star was still in her huddled up position as the silence settled over the dark. Out of fear for what she'd see, she didn't want to turn around. Maybe the wand was gone for good; she could add that disaster on top of losing her family's sacred book of spells and its ancient guardian. Like the good people of Earth said, "when it rains, it pours." But cowering in fear on the dark, cold floor wasn't the Star Butterfly way, and whatever she was going to find, she would have to deal with it sooner or later. So, she figured, might as well get it over with.

There were no burn marks etched in the floor, no splatters or splotches of abended magic to decorate the walls. Nothing was on fire, or frozen, or destroyed. To her biggest surprise, her wand laid where it had clattered, in one piece with not a scratch to be seen. But she wasn't sure what to think of what hovered above it.

There, washing the room in a bright glow, spiraled a cosmic portal unlike any she'd ever conjured with her own scissors.

The destination was hidden to her, the beckoning ingress black as night. Streams of neon purples and blues flowed around its ring. It was foreboding and ominous...and it was calling her name!

It was such a stupid idea. How could she even think of plunging head-first into this thing? Her wand had gone bonkers and fired out some weird, mysterious portal- a portal that could lead literally anywhere - and she was considering going in there?

No. She wasn't considering it. She was doing it. Cautiousness was for safe kids. Pushing forward into the unknown, she retrieved her wand and took her first hesitant step into the abyss.