The old man's hands are dirty. His feet burrow in the sand beneath a large sink, the kind used for washing art supplies or scientific equipment. The night air breathes clean but hot and dry, so it chokes his weak lungs. He feels he is slowly falling apart over the seasons. Perhaps now it is fall. It is hard for him to tell in the desert. His hands tremble, flicking stray drops into the sand, but he masters them. He doesn't have much time. Behind he hears the movement of something large and fast in the distance, the snapping of twigs and sonorous grating of boulders rolled against one another. He turns, searching the dark. Only the stars above shine back. Magnificent, they always look the same. He spins back around, taking them in, and the stars spin too, painting their momentary spiral memory into the midnight canvas. The sound of the running sink brings him back to his hands. How does it run? There is nothing else around. The paint on his hands drips between two of his toes. Below the sand is full of these drips, like a splotchy imprint of the stars above. His rainbow feet are dotted with them, dried into the cracks of his soles, crushed into the gritty sand. As the sounds behind him approach, all he can remember is an old story:

The young man, an artist, didn't know much about marine biology, but had observed over his few trips to the tide pools that starfish were almost always stuck to something. They anchor. You will understand then his surprise to wade through the shallows one morning and find one floating, spinning about in the eddies. Later that day, he struggled to focus on the couple of portraits he had hanging over his head to finish that week. He began to sketch the starfish on a fresh white canvas and then went to sleep. The next day, he awoke from an unpleasant dream and went down to the water again after working some on the portraits. A little wave bumped something rough into his shin, and he looked down to see the same starfish. He thought to himself, is it dead? But after examining the strong little wriggling spinning limbs more closely he thought he could sense some kind of urge in the thing. To be stuck. He went home and came back the next day, the painting of the starfish in his apartment now presenting a greater likeness. The subjects of his other portraits left messages. Instead of answering them, he returned to the beach. One day, finding that he couldn't determine anything to add or subtract, any way to improve the painting, he wrapped it up and brought it on his walk to the shore. He unwrapped it carefully and turned it towards the ocean, telling the starfish what he had done. He brought it closer and closer above the surface until, propped up by a current, the starfish stuck to its portrait.