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The snow crunched under their boots like brittle sugar as Alfred and Matthew pushed deeper into the wilderness beyond Jasper townsite.
They'd left the car at the Maligne Lake trailhead hours ago, well past where most tourists turned back, and now the only sounds were Alfred's periodic grumbling and the soft hush of wind through the lodgepole pines.
The temperature had dipped to -8°C, and the sky was already bruising toward full dark even though it wasn't yet seven.
"I still don't get why we couldn't just drive to the Columbia Icefield centre," Matthew said, pulling his tuque lower and breathing in the crisp, pine scented air. "They have telescopes set up on the glacier road some nights. Heated viewing tents. Hot chocolate. No frostbite warnings."
Alfred huffed, breath exploding in a white plume that glittered briefly before vanishing. He looked ridiculous: bundled in at least three jackets, a scarf wound so many times around his neck it resembled a neck brace, and ski goggles pushed up onto his forehead like a headband.
The heavy backpack with his telescope gear kept sliding off one shoulder; every few steps he'd shrug it back up with an irritated grunt.
"Because that's cheating, Mattie. That's tourist stuff. I want raw. Pristine. Zero light pollution, zero people, just us and the universe. I missed the Perseids in August because of stupid meetings, and besides, you said yourself Jasper's one of the best dark sky preserves on the continent. If I'm gonna freeze my ass off, it's gonna be worth it."
Matthew glanced sideways. Alfred's nose was bright red, his eyelashes dusted white, and despite the complaining he looked... excited. Bright-eyed in a way he rarely let show around anyone else.
"You're going to be a human popsicle in about twenty minutes," Matthew observed mildly.
"Then you can thaw me out with your freakish Canadian blood. Deal?"
Matthew huffed a small laugh. "Deal."
At that moment, Alfred's boot punched through a deceptive crust of snow, sinking him knee deep. He windmilled his arms, cursing in a colorful stream that echoed faintly off the surrounding evergreens , phrases that would have made even the most hardened sailor blush in their creativity if not their volume.
Matthew watched, lips twitching. The sight of his brother, usually so unstoppable and loud, reduced to flailing in powder was endlessly amusing. After a moment of letting Alfred struggle (and swear), he stepped forward, gloved hand extended.
"Come on, hero." He hauled Alfred up with one smooth pull, then steadied the slipping bag before Alfred could snatch it back possessively.
Alfred brushed snow from his jeans, glaring at the innocent white drift as though it had personally insulted him.
"You really gotta do something about all this snow, Mattie. I could've broken my scope. This thing cost more than some people's cars."
"I can't control the weather," Matthew replied patiently for the hundredth time. "I've told you that."
Alfred ignored that, fishing a crumpled topographic map from an inner pocket. He squinted at it, turning it this way and that, brow furrowed in concentration. He was actually decent with maps when he focused, but pride had a way of turning competence into comedy.
"Your maps suck, bro," he grumbled.
Matthew resisted rolling his eyes. "Why don't you let me help?"
"I don't need your help, thank you very much." Alfred traced a finger along a line, then lit up. "Ah-ha! We're almost there. See? Told you I knew where I was going!"
He bounded forward with renewed energy and Matthew had to jog to catch up.
They pushed on another fifteen minutes until the trail opened into the clearing Alfred had circled on his map. No signposts, no fire rings, no footprints except the ones they were making. Just snow, trees, and, above, an enormous, deepening indigo dome already glittering with stars too faint to survive anywhere near a city.
Matthew almost collided with Alfred when he stopped dead at the edge of a wide, open clearing.
"Holy crap," Alfred breathed. "Look at that. Just... look."
The spot was nothing special at first glance: just another snow draped meadow ringed by dark pines, the kind scattered throughout Jasper National Park. But beyond the trees there was... nothing. No cottages, no distant glow from the town, no sodium vapor haze.
Just the Rockies rising black against the deepening indigo of twilight, and above them, an unbroken vault of sky. Pure, ink-dark, already pricked with the first brave stars, dense, textured, almost three dimensional.
Matthew felt a quiet smile tug at his mouth. Of course. Alfred had always chased the clearest views, the least obstructed skies. No wonder he'd dragged them hours from any real road.
"Yeah," he agreed quietly. "It's perfect."
Alfred spun toward him, grin splitting wide. "Told you! I told you this spot was gonna be insane. Now help me get this beast set up before my fingers fall off."
They dropped to their knees in the snow. Alfred unzipped the padded case with the reverence most people reserved for holy relics.
Piece by piece the Orion SkyQuest came together: base, tube, finder scope, eyepieces laid out like surgical instruments on a folded blanket. Alfred hovered the entire time Matthew touched anything.
"Careful with the primary mirror housing, don't let snow get anywhere near the edge. And don't breathe on the secondary; condensation is death."
"I've assembled telescopes before, Al."
"Yeah, but this one's calibrated to within an arcsecond. One speck of ice and the collimation's shot for the rest of the night."
Matthew raised both eyebrows. "You do realize I have my own observatory, right?"
"Old news. This is next-gen. Respect the equipment."
Matthew hummed agreement. He had a similar model himself, though older; his space agency kept him supplied with upgrades, but he rarely bothered updating personally. Alfred always ended up borrowing (and babying) them anyway.
When the scope was finally upright and balanced, Alfred spent another ten minutes tweaking the finder, sighting Polaris, adjusting the altitude and azimuth until the crosshairs sat dead centre.
"Perfection," he declared, stepping back to admire it like a proud parent. Then he dug into the side pocket of his pack and pulled out his notebook.
It was a battered thing filled with his looping scrawl: sketches of nebulae, precise coordinate plots, equations for light pollution adjustments. The pages smelled faintly of old paper and graphite.
Matthew leaned over his shoulder. "You still carry that everywhere?"
Alfred shrugged, suddenly a little sheepish. "Yeah. I mean... it's lucky. And it's got all my old notes. Perseid counts, Messier marathons, that one time I thought I saw a supernova in '78 and it turned out to be a damn airplane."
He flipped it open to a dog-eared page covered in tight, looping handwriting and tiny ink sketches of spiral arms. "Besides. I like seeing my own stupid drawings next to the real thing. Makes it feel... mine."
Matthew reached out without thinking and brushed a gloved thumb over one of the faded galaxies.
"I didn't know you kept going with the hand-drawn stuff. Not that it's any less impressive, but with all the Hubble images and JWST data, I figured.."
Alfred's ears went pink under his tuque. "Apps are great for quick looks. But this?" He tapped the page. "This is slow. You have to sit with it. Count photons in your head. Do the math yourself. It's... honest."
"You sound like an old man."
"I am an old man. Just a hot one."
Matthew snorted. "Keep telling yourself that."
Alfred laughed, bright and sharp against the quiet, then sobered. "Hey. Wait. I've got something for you."
He reached deeper into the pack and pulled out a second notebook, this one even more battered, the leather almost black with age, spine repaired multiple times with what looked like sailor's thread. He held it out.
Matthew took it slowly, like it might crumble. He opened the cover. Page after page of Alfred's obsessive youth: star charts plotted by hand, magnitude estimates, angry red ink where he'd misidentified something and crossed it out, little doodles of himself in a spacesuit planting a flag on the Moon. The dates started in the 1760s and wandered into the 1960s.
"Alfie," Matthew whispered. "This took you... God. A hundred and fifty years?"
"Give or take a war or two." Alfred rubbed the back of his neck. "I want you to have it. You're the only one who gets why it matters."
Matthew did. Endless nights in fields or on rooftops, Alfred's wide eyes fixed on the stars while Matthew watched him more than the sky.
He'd found the notebook in a merchant's stall: fine Italian leather, blank pages begging for secrets, and handed it over without fanfare. The joy on Alfred's face had been brighter than any constellation.
Matthew took it carefully, fingers tracing the worn cover. He pressed the notebook to his chest, leather cool even through layers. His eyes stung.
"Thank you," he managed. "I... I don't even know what to say."
Alfred laughed, slapping his back hard enough to send up a puff of snow. "No problem, dude! There's no one else l'd trust with it."
Matthew wanted to both strangle him and pull him into the tightest hug possible.
Alfred bumped their shoulders together, then turned back to the telescope. "Okay, enough sappy crap. The sky's dark enough. Let's see what we've got."
He dropped to the eyepiece. "Whoa. M42 is ridiculous tonight. Come look."
Matthew leaned in. The Orion Nebula bloomed like a pale rose, tendrils of gas glowing soft green and gold, the Trapezium stars sharp as pins at the heart.
"Well, look at that," Matthew murmured.
"Told you."
They traded turns for the next hour; Andromeda's dust lanes, the Double Cluster in Perseus, the faint smudge of the Triangulum Galaxy. Alfred narrated the whole time, voice low and excited.
"That's NGC 891-edge-on spiral, see the dust lane cutting right through it like a belt? Textbook perfect. And over here, look, look, that's the Helix Nebula. Planetary nebula. Dying star blowing off its outer layers. Kinda beautiful, kinda sad, right?"
Matthew backed away, lowering himself into the snow. The cold seeped through his layers, soothing rather than biting. He lay back, arms spread, staring up. The stars felt closer here, intimate. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed simple stargazing without schedules, without obligations.
He glanced at Alfred: still glued to the telescope, but the frantic energy had softened into something quieter. A small, genuine smile curved his lips, not the flashy grin for crowds, but the soft one only Matthew ever saw. It lit his eyes like reflected starlight.
"Take a break, Al. You've been at it for almost two hours."
Alfred frowned, reluctant, but eventually sighed and trudged over. He flopped down, showering Matthew in snow.
"Asshole," Matthew muttered, kicking his shin lightly.
"Love you too, big bro."
Alfred shifted closer, shoulder pressing against Matthew's like when they were small and the world felt too big.
“You remember when we used to sneak out when Arthur wasn't around and lie on the roof. Just the two of us?"
Matthew nodded. "You'd point at everything and make up names for stars that didn't have any yet."
"Yeah. And you'd tell me which ones were real and which ones I invented." Alfred's voice softened further. "I still think about that sometimes. How easy it was."
"It still is. Sometimes."
Alfred turned his head. Their faces were close enough that Matthew could see the reflection of stars in his brother's eyes.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
A beat of silence. Then Alfred reached over and laced their gloved fingers together. "Don't tell anyone l'm getting sentimental. I've got a reputation."
"Your secret's safe."
They lay there a long time, long enough for the cold to seep in, long enough for Orion to climb higher, long enough that the only sound was their breathing and the occasional soft hoot of an owl somewhere in the trees.
Alfred spoke first, voice barely above a whisper.
"I'm gonna get up there one day, Mattie, farther than anyone has ever gone before. Not just look at it. Go. Touch it. Walk on another world."
Matthew squeezed his hand. "I know."
"You believe me?"
"I believe in you."
"Sap."
"Takes one to know one."
Another quiet stretch. Then Alfred rolled onto his side, propping his head on one hand so he could look down at Matthew. "Hey. Thanks for coming out here with me. I know you hate walking in snow at night."
"I don't hate it," Matthew said. "I just hate when you make me hike through it."
Alfred grinned. "Worth it?"
Matthew looked up at the, endless and silent. "Yeah. Worth it."
Alfred flopped back down, closer this time, head resting against Matthew's shoulder.
"Good. 'Cause I'm not moving till the sky starts getting light again."
Matthew smiled into the dark. "Fine by me."
Silence settled, comfortable and vast. No meetings, no borders, no endless crises, just the stars wheeling slowly overhead, ancient and indifferent and perfect.
For one night, at least, the world was very simple.
Just brothers.
Just stars.
Just time.