In a small coastal town where the air perpetually smelled of salt and ripe mangoes, lived an old astronomer named Eduardo. His most prized possession was an ancient brass telescope that, according to local legend, had belonged to his great-grandfather who claimed it could see beyond the stars themselves.
“The telescope chooses what it wants to show you,” Eduardo would tell anyone who’d listen, his weathered face creasing into mysterious smiles. “It has its own selfish desires.”
On particularly clear nights, when the moon hung low like a ripe fruit ready to fall into the Caribbean Sea, Eduardo would invite his young neighbor Isabella to peer through the telescope’s eyepiece. Isabella, with her wild copper hair that seemed to capture the sunset, was the only one who believed his tales without question.
“What do you see tonight, pequeña?” Eduardo asked one evening, as Isabella pressed her eye against the brass instrument.
“The stars…” she whispered, her voice trembling with wonder. “They’re dancing, Don Eduardo! They’re forming patterns I’ve never seen before!”
Eduardo nodded knowingly. “Ah, the telescope likes you. It shows you its secrets.”
That night, something extraordinary happened. As Isabella watched through the lens, the stars began arranging themselves into words - ancient Spanish phrases that spoke of futures yet to come and pasts long forgotten. The telescope grew warm under her touch, humming with an energy that seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat.
“Don Eduardo,” she called out, “the stars are telling me stories!”
But when she turned around, Eduardo was gone. In his place stood a shimmering figure made entirely of starlight, wearing Eduardo’s familiar Panama hat.
“The telescope has chosen its new keeper,” the figure spoke, its voice like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. “It grew tired of showing me the same old histories. It yearned for young eyes that could see new stories.”
Isabella reached out to touch the starlit apparition, but her hand passed through it like morning mist. “But where will you go?”
The figure smiled, beginning to fade. “To where all selfish telescopes send their former masters - to become part of the stories themselves.”
“Wait!” Isabella cried out. “What stories? What am I supposed to do?”
But the figure had already dissolved into tiny points of light that floated upward, joining the vast canvas of stars above. The telescope grew cold in her hands, and for a moment, she thought she saw the stars arrange themselves into a winking face.
Through the lens, the night sky had never looked quite the same again, but Isabella never did tell anyone what stories the selfish telescope showed her after that night. Some say on quiet evenings, they can hear her talking to the stars, her laughter mixing with the sound of distant