Shooting Stars

Clutching the control panel he looks over the myriad of buttons and gears, trying to work out which will stop the maddening descent to Earth and which will simply hinder his wish to stop, go back, see his children just one more time. Give them a chance to say goodbye.
He glances out the window and sees the ever-flowing glow of the stars drifting by, as if they are the ones hurtling towards the planet which was once his home. He wishes, for an instant, his children were here. They would play shooting stars, he imagines, pretending they were out there too, dancing endlessly in ink-black skies, laughing and playing with boundless energy.
He begins to press buttons, tentatively at first, and then, overcome by regret, confusion, fear, loss, he pushes harder, and before long he is pounding upon random buttons, desperately pulling gears, and he doesn’t realise he is crying before he notices the panel is damp. He gives up, resigned to his new fate, and simply rests his head upon the surface, trying not to think. He’s done more complicated things that this before: why can’t he work out how to fix this? Against his principles, he begins to despair.
It’s almost funny that, just the day before, this was what he wanted most.
Down on Earth, a boy looks up into the night sky, points, laughs, at this strange sight: a bright light, arcing its way towards the ground. The sky is astonishingly clear tonight, and the shooting star makes a stark contrast with the darkness. The boy, lacking the vocabulary, simply stares, open-mouthed, and breathes a sigh of delight.
His mother notes this, places her hand on his shoulder in a gesture of love, leans down and whispers in his ear.
‘Make a wish, honey,’ she tells him, softly. ‘It might just come true.’