Copernica is a shooting star who has burned herself out on Hope’s wishes, and Ras wishes all the wishes would just go away. So when Copernica decides to rocket herself away from the world, Ras and Hope need to find where The miracle of them lies.

ACTORS: 2 Female (1 - any age, the other 20s), and 1 Male (20s).

Past Productions: Staged Reading, Mile Post 5, Portland, OR, September 25, 2012. Actors were Gary Corbin, Kate Belden, and Kristin Olson-Huddle.

At rise: COPERNICA stands center stage, holding a crash helmet.)

COPERNICA: Prologue.

(COPERNICA sits down center at a table and puts the crash helmet on her head. RAS and HOPE enter and stand upstage left and right facing out. HOPE carries a bag or purse of some kind.)

COPERNICA: You call,

HOPE: O, Star. O, Promise Keeper.

COPERNICA: and I come flying to your side

HOPE: O, Child of the Perseids.

RAS: Oh, God.

COPERNICA: My wings afire,

RAS: Here we go.

COPERNICA: my nose filled with the soot

of yearning

HOPE: I have wished upon thee.

RAS: I’m right here.

COPERNICA: The char of my feathers trailing behind

I enter your atmosphere

RAS: Here in the flesh. Christ.

COPERNICA: My thoughts of you

Pulled forward into the wake

Drafting effortlessly behind your need.

HOPE: Hear your supplicant.

COPERNICA: I hear.

HOPE: And shower me with abundance,

COPERNICA: I give

HOPE: love,

RAS: I got paid today.

COPERNICA: anything for you I give

I give until I am weightless

RAS: It’s not much,

HOPE: perfection,

RAS: but I worked hard for it.

HOPE: and unbearable joy!

COPERNICA: I give under the weight of you

RAS: So we could have stuff,

HOPE: I praise,

RAS: and keep going.

COPERNICA: I give in

HOPE: and you grant

RAS: We need paper towels.

HOPE: bounty.

RAS: Bounty.

HOPE: Bounty!

COPERNICA: and I give out

And by the Graces it feels good.

RAS: Bounty paper towels.

(HOPE and RAS enter COPERNICA’s area where she sits. HOPE glares at COPERNICA, takes a rock out of her bag and puts it deliberately in front of COPERNICA in an accusatory manner. She then turns to RAS.)

HOPE: You willed me to the window?

(RAS just stands there.)

You stood outside my window and willed me to you.

(RAS shrugs.)

With your—what was it?—Rasputin-like magnetism? Calling out to me in irresistible waves of passion—

(RAS smiles.)

HOPE: —Tcht! Do not smile about this!

(RAS stops smiling. COPERNICA looks up at HOPE)

HOPE: What are you looking at?

RAS: Leave her out of this.

HOPE: She…failed me. Us!

(Over the next four lines, COPERNICA brings her fingers to her ears to plug them and then begins making a sort of blasting off sound followed by a sustained rocket sound that gets progressively louder.)

RAS: It was a party for Chrissake.

HOPE: Well you don’t have to believe.

RAS: Good, because I don't./

HOPE: But I do and I wish you would trust me./

RAS: Trust you with what when I don't believe?/

HOPE: Trust me when I tell you that something extraordinary happened that night!

(HOPE yanks COPERNICA's hands away from her ears as punctuation to the end of her line. COPERNICA stops the sound. Pause.)

RAS: Fine. Believe in a stupid rock.

HOPE: It came from the sky…?

RAS: Whatever. It’s still a rock.

COPERNICA: I’m going away.

RAS: Finally.

COPERNICA: To make my life bigger.

HOPE: (Glares at RAS, then to COPERNICA.) You’re not going anywhere.

COPERNICA: Much, much bigger. I’ve decided.

HOPE: (Back to RAS) Copernica brought us together.

RAS: It flew through the window.

COPERNICA: I’ve gotten so small.

HOPE: I wished upon it.

RAS: The world doesn’t work that way. Fine. Look, have it your way. But I don’t want to be around every time you decide to pull it out and play Show and Tell.

HOPE: Everyone else enjoys it.

RAS: It’s embarrassing.

COPERNICA: It wasn’t always like that.

RAS: Let’s just drop it, OK? You have your story, I have mine.

(Pause)

HOPE: So you stood outside and willed me to come to my window.

RAS: Of course not.

HOPE: That I took one look at you and had no other choice but to invite you up.

RAS: I was making a point.

(Beat)

I wanted you so bad. And this rock has nothing to do with it.

HOPE: (picks up the rock) It doesn’t look like much, does it?

RAS: No.

COPERNICA: I don’t feel like much.

HOPE: This could be anything. Any rock in the whole friggin universe, and it came through my window just as you walked up to my house.

RAS: Quite the coincidence.

HOPE: But it wasn’t. I keep telling you, I wished for it—

RAS: Wishes are ridiculous, Hope! You think there aren’t a billion people wishing for potable water? Or love? Or happiness? Life’s never that easy, so what makes your wishes so goddamned special?

(Pause. HOPE backs up, stunned, then turns on COPERNICA.)

HOPE: What’s the matter with you? Do something! I didn’t wish for this!

(COPERNICA gets up and faces RAS and HOPE.)

COPERNICA: I have just enough fire in this smoldering belly of mine—

HOPE: Yes?

COPERNICA: —to leave, to rocket myself beyond the mesosphere, where once I lost myself to brilliance and the attentions of a thousand thousand stargazers. And there, there I will be full and light.

HOPE: You…you can’t go anywhere. You’re mine. I summoned you here.

COPERNICA: How dare you! The conceit of you, directing the heavens! You take and take, and by the Graces, you have become ponderous and dull!

RAS: Hey, hey! She believed in you.

COPERNICA: And you! You, who want everything and never allow yourself to believe any of it can be so! You are the most pitiful!

RAS: Oh, yeah? Well, you didn’t come from the sky. What do you think of that?

HOPE: Oh, would you just let me have something!

RAS: No! Obviously I can’t. Because everyone here is all about how magical life is. Well, it isn’t. And that rock came from my own goddamned back yard and flew through your window because I threw it! Now, can we please just have our lives back?

(Pause.)

COPERNICA: Well. I’m bored. How about you? I’ll be going now.

(COPERNICA picks up the rock.)

HOPE: No! Please!

RAS: Didn’t you hear me? You’re just an ordinary rock.

HOPE: Ras, would you just shut the fuck up.

RAS: But rocks don’t…go anywhere.

(COPERNICA hands RAS the rock.)

COPERNICA: No. This ordinary rock is still yours. Now what will you have to say about it?

(COPERNICA exits to far upstage center and looks forward upon RAS and HOPE who come together under the evening stars.)

COPERNICA: Epilogue.

HOPE: (Holding the rock.) This could be anything.

RAS: But it isn’t. It might look like any ol’ rock, but this rock has history. And if you were smart you might just listen to what I have to say.

HOPE AND COPERNICA: Then say it.

RAS: OK. This rock was once big. I mean really big. And it fell through the atmosphere and burned up and became this brilliant streak of white light in the evening sky. Then it landed in your back yard, and by the time it did it was only this big.

HOPE: That’s really something.

RAS: Mhm. And your dad, he had a thing against rocks.

HOPE: He did not.

RAS: He did. You just don’t remember. He paid me 50 cents so that he could sit his lazy ass on the riding mower while I walked ahead of him picking up rocks so they didn’t get caught up in the blades.

HOPE: Those rocks could have hurt someone if they shot out.

RAS: I guess. And then he had me pile up all the rocks between your yard and mine.

HOPE: They had to go somewhere.

RAS: It was such a mess, piled up that way. It could have been a beautiful wall.

HOPE: That’s a weird thing to think.

RAS: He didn’t see the beauty in rocks.

HOPE: Nasty blade-mangling rocks.

RAS: Anyway, years later, when I realized how much I was in love with you. I climbed over the wall late at night, and grabbed this rock here so I could throw it through your win—

HOPE: Wait. This one. Here.

RAS: This one.

HOPE: The one that fell from the sky.

RAS: Yeah. I just said so.

HOPE: And how do you know it came from the sky? Or that it’s even the same one—

RAS AND COPERNICA: Shhh.

RAS: I’m telling this story.

END OF PLAY