twilight

I always liked twilight; it's the time of night for storytellers and liars, that time when our eyes convince us we can see perfectly fine, that the encroaching night hasn't yet robbed us of our ability to perceive things as they really are. It's so much easier to lie as the little details fade into the grey light of dusk, as the shadows conceal just how strained our smiles are . . .

It was one of those late summer twilights where the nights are just starting to get cool, offering tantalizing hints of the autumn to come, that Nevena asked if I still trusted her. Of course I said yes, and of course I immediately wondered if she had somehow detected that we had, as it were, lost faith. But she seemed comforted by my answer--or maybe that, too, was a lie. "I'm glad to hear you say that," she said. "It's good to know you have my back."

The deepening shadows continued to gather as I stared at them, trying to divine their secrets. "We've been through so much together," I said, the lie falling conveniently onto my tongue. "I think by now you've earned some trust." 

In the half-light, she looked more severe, the shadows giving her strange contours. It cast an edge to her smile that made me uneasy. "If only everyone were as loyal as you," she said. Was it sincere praise? Was it a wry condemnation of the fact that even as we spoke I was wondering how long it would be until I betrayed her and how deep I would thrust the knife when I finally did? Either way, those words cut deep. I forced a smile and thanked the gloaming that she wouldn't be able to see how much effort it took not to cry.

Then she shuddered from the growing cold--she always did like it warm--and stood up and put a hand on my shoulder affectionately, like she always used to. "It's a shame summers always end," she said.

And so I was alone, if anyone can call herself alone when surrounded by a thousand shadows that stretch and transform. I welcomed those shadows as friends, safe in the conviction that, for now at least, they would conceal the quiet weeping and give me time to compose myself to maintain the lie through the lonely depths of night and into the harsh light of the day.

aurora

I'd been sent to the frozen south partly, I think, because my superiors in the Order didn't particularly like me. Too many opinions that, in their eyes, nearly crossed the line into heresy. (This was outright slander, of course; my opinions had all well since crossed that line, but they were not imaginative enough to see why.) But there were pre-Spire relics there, and given that the church's influence there was weak . . . well, someone had to go and make sure these pagan relics and blasphemous texts were properly sealed away.

In the days when the church was run by zealots, they would never have dreamed of sending someone like me on such missions. But now, even the Order's ecclesiastical hierarchy was filled, not with those who seemed the most pious or the most devoted, but to those who were most apt to doing the political bidding of those in the position to appoint them, and the most prestigious (and lucrative) positions were those where they could be the most useful politically. Censors in the major cities, scholars at the biggest libraries . . . of course they sent people to the south as punishment. Of course they didn't consider that sending their most heterodox and iconoclastic thinkers to a place where the church's influence was almost nonexistent would backfire.

I thought at first that they were simply not thinking clearly. But I realized, one night late in the fall--already those nights were bitter cold--when the whole southern sky seemed to dance with a strange red light, and my host, at my astonished cry, simply said, "That's the aurora; it happens sometimes"--that they were afraid. These chaotic, joyful lights, in their minds, could not have been the work of their creator, who tamed chaos and brought the wilds to order. Another wonder they'd suppress if they could, I suppose.

last quarter

The Princess was quite drunk when she found me--I didn't even know she was in the city. Last I'd heard her attempts to besiege the city had failed and her armies were in full retreat, and her generals . . . she shouldn't have been here. At first I wasn't even sure it was her, but she has a way of filling the room with her presence even when she's lost control of, well, everything.

I helped sneak her onto the roof of the theatre, and she passed me a bottle of wine and stared at the moon. "I used to like the half moon," she said. "It felt uncertain, like it could be waxing or waning. So much potential."

I took a long drink of her wine--even disguised in a city where she would be killed on sight, she drank far better wine than we mere performers were permitted to touch--and said nothing, but she seemed to accept that as a response. Or perhaps she was merely soliloquizing; I certainly was no stranger to that.

"Then I learned how to tell." She scowled at me, at the world. "There's no potential, just ignorance."

Then she turned and looked at me, suddenly urgent. "You have to leave the city tonight." I opened my mouth to respond but she put her finger against my lips. "No arguing. No questions. Promise. Pack up and leave tonight."

Did I even have a choice? "I promise," I said, because standing up to Nevena when she brought her entire presence to bear on you was impossible--or maybe I really did sense the urgency there. Maybe I didn't need to ask questions to understand that she would drown the city that night.

So I did. I fled the city, and I was only able to convince some of the others to join me, and we left by the light of that waning moon she hated so much. Word of the calamity wouldn't reach us for a few days, but still every night I'd look at the moon and think of her and wonder what terrible thing she was contemplating.

shooting star

 A shooting star landed in the village square, once. An impossibly bright streak tore through the sky, and I was already on my feet and running when I heard a resounding boom a few seconds later. And I didn't stop running until I reached the square, where several other villagers had gathered around a little crater, maybe a few feet across, that had formed in the cobblestones of the square. There was an almost reverential silence among them.

They looked up at me as I slowed to a halt--they never did quite see me as one of their own, but here, I think, they were glad to see me. They stepped aside as I walked up to the crater, still out of breath, and knelt down next to it. It seemed to glow faintly in response to my presence, and as I reached for it--"Careful, girl, it's hot"--it actually leapt into my hand. It was maybe the size of the closed fist of someone with larger hands than me, and it was indeed hot. It should have been too hot to touch, but somehow it didn't scald my hands.

I stood up, holding it in my cupped palms, and the villagers backed away as I turned to face them. "New life," I told them. "It won't forget, if you help it." Before they could respond, I said, "Give it some thought. I'm taking it back to my cabin." I prodded the edge of the crater with my food. "Not a bad place for a little shrine."

The old fears still lingered after the Spire fell, but they were slowly learning to trust the spirits again. I spent the rest of the night learning what I could about the new spirit, showing it the forest and the foothills. When I walked into town in the morning, a small stone shrine had been built at the site of the crater. I smiled and left the meteorite there, along with an offering of some of the coins I'd kept with me from my travels.

It felt good to be a part of something new.

cyclone

A cyclone hit the capital during one of our performances once. The opera house was in the new city, on one of the cliffs overlooking the old city, that impossible district that was reclaimed from the ocean at the city's foundation. The insistent howling of the wind had the audience on edge as I sang, and when someone ran in and shouted that the city was flooding, the panic drove most of them to run outside and see. We crept our way up to the rooftops to watch.

The rain was heavy enough that I was soaked immediately, despite putting on a cloak before going outside, and the wind made just staying upright difficult. But with some effort, and bracing ourselves on the railings, we could see the old city, if only just: the waves crashing over the floodbanks, the water accumulating in the marble streets. People were fleeing, of course, and later the theatre's director provided shelter for those of our patrons who were displaced by the storm--a whole building filled with aristocrats, cowering against the storm.

I went back to the roof rather than deal with them. It was autumn, right at the time when the trees were filled with golden leaves, and in this terrible gale the air was full of leaves, dancing and swirling to the tuneless rhythm of nature's wrath. It was such a beautiful reminder that we exist at the sufferance of the storm and the sea, that even the wealthiest and most powerful of us must sometimes submit to the wind and rain.

Eventually someone found me and dragged me inside and forced me to drink some hot cider and change into something that wasn't wet, and eventually the storm subsided and the city recovered, more or less. And the following morning, the streets around the theatre were covered in a carpet of golden leaves.

waning gibbous

I was quite drunk the first time I met Nevena. I wasn't expecting to be forced to entertain anyone important that night but, well, the heiress of the Spire can do what she pleases. I was on the rooftop, moongazing, partly because too much drink makes me even less social than usual, partly because I like the moon, partly because I was just in a bad mood.

It wasn't until much later that I'd realize who she was--she was just another aristocrat who heard me sing and wanted to meet me; some hoped they could take me to bed, some just wanted to be able to say they'd met the theatre's rising star, and some presumably genuinely thought I'd be interesting. And normally I was--it's a professional skill--but normally I had warning.

"Waning gibbous," she said, and I just made an affirmative noise. She sat down next to me. "It's lovely, isn't it?"

I said nothing. If she had something to say, she'd get around to it eventually. But I did hand her the mostly-empty bottle of wine I'd brought up here, and was rewarded with a laugh. "Drinking in silence it is."

And we did--or rather, she did. I'd already stopped for the night. But the moon was lovely, and despite everything having someone to simply sit with me and watch did make me feel a little better. "It is lovely," I said at last.

"It always feels like a shame, watching the moon shrink away to nothing," she said.

"I doubt there'd be many songs and poems about the moon if it was just full all the time," I said. "It'd be like a boring sun."

She laughed again. "You're right, of course."

The silence settled over us once again; already I felt more comfortable with her, despite myself. This time neither of us broke it until the cool night air set me to shivering. And I couldn't help but smile as she handed me back the empty bottle. "Sorry for drinking your wine. I'll find a way to make it up to you." Then she was gone, and I went back inside and made my apologies to the other members of our little troupe and made my way back to my sad little tenement.

I wondered who she was, what she'd wanted. She was a strange companion but, surprisingly, not an unwelcome one; and I wondered if, wherever she was, she, too, was still looking at the waning moon.

planet

I used to imagine, late at night, what it must have been like to be the first person to notice the planets--not in the sense that they are bright and pretty, but in the sense that they blaze their own paths through the night's sky. It must have been early indeed, before we had really mapped the skies, when we relied instead on memory to remember where the constellations lie, and someone finally noticed: that one bright star we noticed last night isn't moving with the others. Were they signs of ill omen, I wondered, or were they seen as trailblazers, guiding us into the unknown? 

We've mapped their courses now, of course. We understand so much more, even if much of that understanding is locked away in the mystics' observatories, unseen by lay eyes. And the planets, these brave wanderers, have taught us so much about the shape of the universe. The scientists know now that we do not lie at the center of the universe; the astrologers say that the workings of the heavens, of which the planets are key players, teach us a great deal about the workings of the earth. All of this because a long time ago some stargazer was curious about why that one star seemed different than the others.

In some ways it's strange that I've lived my whole life in a world where we've mapped the stars. Oh, there are new discoveries, of course, there is still so much mystery in the heavens, but I can point at that bright light in the evening and say "what's that one?" and receive a meaningful answer.

In a world where so many things have gone wrong, it's comforting to be able to look at my favorite planet and think of all the other people throughout history who have also looked at it, and been struck by its beauty, and were left with a lasting curiosity. We have failed in many ways, but at least we still have the stars.

rainbow

Sometimes, the sun breaks.

I watched the capital drown. I watched the floodgates shatter, and the ocean rush in, and from a clear blue sky a storm arose, blackening the sky and making a quiet morning into a tempest. I watched, in one terrible instant, the moment the old world fell. And I stood there, overlooking the city, watching, because what else could I do? What could anyone do? The wind and the rain and the thunder drowned out the sounds of everyone still in that city crying out in terror as the ocean at last reclaimed her own.

Then the storm began to diminish and retreat inland, and the ocean began to calm, and there, behind that bone-white spire that now jutted out of the ocean like a gravestone, was a rainbow. At the time I felt nothing: not the rain that had soaked through my clothes, not awe at the beauty of the rainbow, not horror at the calamity I'd just witnessed. I was too numb for any of that. But later, when I was more myself, when I was able to weep, I considered the rainbow.

It has always been a sign of hope, a beautiful thing that follows the rain; the more religious among us see it as a promise from whatever divine or spiritual entities they believe controls the weather; I am not so fortunate as to have such beliefs, but the narrative is compelling, isn't it? At the end of a disaster that I still have yet to fully fathom, there is a promise, that at least there is something bright in the future.

But my mind refuses to accept that comfort for long--did we buy this bright future at the cost of the present? Can such a purchase ever merit such a terrible cost? Or perhaps this really is the start of a brighter future, perhaps the world that springs up in the wake of this disaster will be a just world. Would that be worth it, if so? So many people are prepared to trade their lives just to make this world better for a few moments; would an entire city be prepared to burn so that a better world could grow from their ashes?

Is the rainbow, in short, ever worth it?

tornado

The first clear sign that the Spire was failing happened in the city of Idreinen. Oh, there had been rumors, but there were rumors even at its peak--any time the wind inconvenienced a merchantman, or any time the rains made a farmer's life more difficult--but this time, neither the Order's truest believers nor its wiliest propagandists could deny it.

I spent more time in Idreinen than I did in the capital at the time, because it was more interesting. The Prince was boring, the future Princess was a dilettante--Idreinen, that beautiful city, that hub of trade and culture and scholarship, was the place where history happened. So it was that, standing on the Duke's gilded balcony, drinking his wine, listening to him dismissing these new philosophers' vanity and their jealousy, I saw the sky turn green.

It's odd, seeing thy sky in the wrong color. You immediately sense that something is wrong, but instead of withdrawing inside, the mind is drawn to the aberration, fascinated by it--it's not until the impossibly loud clap of thunder and the sudden roar of the descending funnel cloud that you realize you really should find shelter.

A ducal palace full of wealthy merchants and freshly minted nobility can still descend into a panic when they see their Duke, normally so confident, running for the basement with a look of absolute terror on his face. Wine glasses were dropped, tables of refreshments overturned, servants shoved roughly aside--some were quite badly injured. The tornado missed the palace, of course, though it did damage some of the nearby mansions.

Somehow, the story of the tumultuous retreat spread throughout the city, despite my repeated insistence to my friends that they not repeat a word of it to anyone. It was certainly never my intention for the people of the city to sneer at the Duke and those elite enough to attend his parties, much less to expose their hypocrisy as people who claimed to care about the people and yet quickly descended into chaos the moment they were threatened.

At least the palace was spared.

full moon

When I still think of her, I think of the full moon: bright and beautiful and impossible to ignore. And I think of all the times she arranged to have her most important gatherings, from grand balls to informal salons, coincide with that moon, and how effortless she made being in perfect control seem on those days. Those were the days she cemented alliances, and those were the days she destroyed her enemies with a single carefully timed word. Those were the nights she seemed unstoppable.

It was an autumn evening, the last time she was able to make the city dance to her rhythm and no one else's. The gusty wind that day even had the leaves dancing for her, making the whole city alight with red and gold, carpeting the streets on the way to the palace. And then by nightfall, the clouds raced through the sky, adding even more drama to a fantastically golden moon. I thought that night--even me, who had long since resolved to leave as soon as I found the strength--that this was it. Here, tonight, she would win, and the last of her enemies would fail, and we could finally live in that utopia she always dreamed of.

I was on the balcony enjoying the breeze in my hair and the spectacle of that perfect moon when the illusion broke. I didn't know the woman who found me, but she wore the green sash that marked her as one of the enemy. "Where is she?" she asked. "Aren't you her . . ." she seemed to struggle for the right word to describe me, much as I often did. She waved her hand irritably. Whatever name I went by, I was unimportant. "I have a message."

There was something odd in her tone. "I don't know where she is," I said, carefully, "but if it's urgent--"

"It is."

"--then I can deliver a message to her."

She seemed to steel herself, and then she delivered the news. That there was a coup planned, and nearly complete--that the following day the rivals of the Princess would have her and her supporters arrested. Here, immediately following her display of such impossible majesty and power, she would be cut down.

What can you say to that? It felt almost impossible to believe, but I believed it regardless. I forgot, I suppose, that the full moon inevitably wanes.

galaxy

Those first nights on the road, we slept under the stars. It was still summer, if only just, and the nights were still warm, and for Elara and myself this was really the first time we'd ever left the city, had never, as Drysi put it, ever seen the night sky. (Perhaps it's hard for you to imagine, just as it was hard for us to imagine what a truly dark night was like. But there were always lights in the city: lanterns in the streets, candles and fires burning in the houses and palaces . . . life did not stop when the sun set in the city.)

At first I was amazed at how many more stars there were, how dark it really was once the fire had died. Then, as I lay there on the verge of sleep, Drysi shook me awake. I blinked away the lingering dreams, and looked into her face--here in the starlight it was a dark shadow against an impossibly bright sky--and she just whispered, "look."

And there it was, stretching across the sky, that strange glowing band of the galaxy--something I'd only ever heard described before. As I stared in awe, she kissed me in the cheek and leaned up against my shoulders. "Something you haven't seen before," she said.

I hadn't. I had nothing to say before this, the impossible majesty of the night's sky, but somewhere in my heart I resolved to see the world outside of the city--so many people had told me what a strange place it was, but it was my home. There was beauty there, of course--ah, if only you could have walked those streets--but it was familiar.

At the time, though, we lay there and watched the sky in silence. Words, as ever, came later, inadequate tools to paint a world that defies description.

snow

The road took me, eventually, to a little village in the foothills, where they maintained a pass through the mountains. They didn't ask where I'd come from, only that I help where I could, and I was happy for the chance to put my hands to use doing something constructive for once. Mostly I ended up helping them maintain the trails: I'd spent so much time wandering anyway, surviving on whatever the wild provided, and it was a long and lonely project much of the time.

Every winter the snows would come and render the mountains impassable; every autumn they--we--turned all our efforts towards building up our stockpiles and surviving the winter. They were hard winters, and despite our best preparations, we couldn't always make sure everyone survived. Sometimes the snows came sooner than we were prepared for; sometimes they lasted too far into the spring.

But it was so beautiful. The world covered in snow, silent and pristine; the light of the hearthfires casting a warm glow on the snowflakes as they danced in the wind; even after seeing people I'd come to care for lost to the winter, I never tired of the perfect serenity of a snowbound world. And more than that: until the thaw, there was nothing to do but wait. We were trapped, yes, but we were also free: the rest of the world couldn't hurt us here.

I will always be an outsider here, no matter how welcoming they are, but that would be true anywhere. At least here I can help. At least here I can keep them safe from the rest of this dying world when the snows can't.

thunder

When I was very little, I loved thunderstorms. My caretakers often had to drag me back inside when the storms broke, because I'd run out onto the balconies and stare at the sky and--well, of course they worried. Storms weren't even supposed to happen, not here at the beating heart of the world. That's why I existed.

No one told me this, of course, that the reason I was born was to quiet the storms. I wonder what my father used to think, watching his daughter laughing and staring at the storms, enthralled by their beauty, when no doubt he hoped that I would naturally sense that they are my enemy, that I was meant to crush them. With every bolt of lightning, every clap of thunder, did his hopes die? Did he worry that I would fail in my duty, my sole purpose on this earth, because I thought the thing I was born to destroy was beautiful?

He's gone now, and everyone has left me. There's another storm tonight, one of the worst I've ever seen--so much lightning illuminating my city, so much rain. I should be planning for what's to come, but now, as I sit here in my tent, listening to the rain and the thunder, all I can do is think of those storms when I was a child, the excitement, the joy . . . I can't feel it anymore. And I can't bring myself to do what I must if I can't, just one last time.

The storm feels like an opportunity, like it's lingering for no reason besides to give me a chance to enjoy what I had once loved, years ago, but instead I simply find myself afraid. Not just of the thunder, though with each bolt--so deafeningly close, and here I am so exposed on the cliffs above the city--my heart pounds. But soon the storm will end, the seas will calm, and one way or another, all of this must end.

sun

It got hot early that summer, far hotter than I'd ever experienced it. I always hated summer, and now, so soon after the spring had withdrawn, the sun burned bright and oppressive in the sky and it was all we could do to languor in the shade and hope that the nights would cool off enough to be tolerable. And for a while that's what we did: slept in the dark, emerged at night, when we could all at least pretend that this was some way to live.

That was the summer we left the capital to visit Drysi's homeland, the desert highlands east of the mountains--it was, depending on who you asked, a diplomatic visit to renew the friendship between the capital and the highlands, or a show of force to remind the highlanders what would happen if they ever proved to be inadequate friends. 

So we crept out one night from the place where we were not quite guests and not quite prisoners--Drysi most of all, the hostage who had been too long from home--and, guided by moonlight and desperation, we followed the stream to the lake and wetlands. There, rather than the endless stone and sage, low trees and shrubs and reeds huddled together, desperate for a taste of that precious water. And there we built a little shelter, and spent the day cooling ourselves in the lake and relaxing in the shade.

As the sun finally sank behind the mountains, so too did the thin wispy clouds that Drysi said marked a change in the weather first appear. A promise (and, perhaps, a warning) that even the most tyrannical reign must come to an end eventually.

cirrus clouds

The one thing that kept me from feeling like a prisoner was watching the sky. It leaves messages for those who know how to read them. So whenever I felt trapped, I'd find a roof and sit and see what the sky had to say. 

Little Seva and I didn't agree on much, but she liked watching the skies with me. Those times were . . . sacred, almost. We'd sit together in perfect silence, no arguing, no petty maneuvering, just reading the clouds. Even after, when we returned to our lives and went back to disagreeing on everything, we'd never say a word about it to anyone. This was ours in a way that was deeper and more powerful than words could express.

That anchor was enough. Even once we'd gone our separate ways, she to her dream of building an enlightened world, me to case the grounds of the city that was my prison, she would still find me sometimes, sitting on a high place, reading the sky.

It had been a clear, hot summer when a curtain of cirrus clouds spread across the sky, and she joined me at the garden that overlooked the old city. Without a word she sat next to me, just like old friends, and we watched the setting sun paint those clouds in astonishing shades of pink and red. After a while, she said, "There's a storm coming, isn't there?"

"Yeah."

"A bad one?"

"Looks like."

The brilliant shades of sunset faded, leaving only the deepening blues of twilight fading into night, and finally she stood. "They'll be wondering where I am. I'd best be getting back to the palace."

"Good luck, little Seva. I'll be seeing you."

I'd half expected her to ask me for help--even the oldest traditions have to give way sometime--but she didn't. Even faced with a storm we both knew would be a disaster, she respected that.

first quarter

The Princess once told me she liked the potential that half moons represented--it was halfway between full and new, and you couldn't tell just by looking at it which way it was going. Would it wane and become a crescent? Would it bulge and wax until it grew full?

And because I'm me, of course I corrected her--that of course you could tell which way it would go by which half of the moon was illuminated, or simply by paying attention; of course she told me I didn't get the point, and at the time I was willing to accept that. But now I realized that I understood the point all too well.

She saw the moon--it was in its first quarter at the time--as her empire, of course. And the metaphor, the point she was making, is that she had inherited a half moon, with no way to tell whether it was waxing or waning. But it was waning, of course it was. Anyone who studied such things--and I did, it was why I was even in the same room as her--could have told her that.

That night when I tried to tell her which quarter she was looking at, she pinned me to the bed and covered my mouth and ordered me not to tell her; when a gibbous moon appeared above the horizon the following night she seemed pleased, like this was a good omen. And at the time I thought it was just a harmless game, maybe a little superstition--we all have our little foibles--but looking back I wonder if she wasn't making a point, that the truth, knowing where we'd been, where we were going, didn't matter.

And perhaps it didn't. I don't know what we could have done to stem the tide. But we'd all fought so hard for the truth, and sometimes I wonder if perhaps there was something, something none of us saw.

storm

The storm developed faster than I expected, when I was too far from camp to make it back even to the mild shelter the tents and wagons offered. So I ran for the shelter the ruins offered, and hid there as the rain poured down and the wind howled and the thunder roared. Even when the sky was still clear and the sun was still shining the ruins seemed an ominous prospect, but now, each bolt of lightning seemed to make the shadows of this forgotten place deeper. So I sat as close to the entrance as I could, wrapped in my travelling coat, trying my best not to touch anything.

I wasn't sure the hunter was real when she first appeared in the entryway, spear in hand--I'd managed to keep the echoes of the past to a minimum, but every now and then a stray would make its way into my memory--but I recognized her from the caravan, and when she shook the rain from her hair and stepped into the ruins to join me I felt a sense of . . . relief isn't quite the word. That she had come looking for me was a comfort, of course, but also I was simply glad of her company.

"Did you come looking for me?" I asked, more for having something to say than anything. She beamed and nodded. Now that she was in the shelter she removed her cloak and shook the rain out of that, as well. "I thought we had another hour or so before the storm," I said.

She sat down opposite me and held out the less-damp cloak to me; I carefully accepted it and wrapped it around my shoulders. (A flash of an echo: a traveler, looking lost and alone. How beautiful she is. It takes a brief moment to realize that the traveler is me.) "Did someone ask you to check on me?" She shook her head. So she had come on her own. I patted the ground next to me and she obligingly scooted over to sit next to me.

We sat like that for a while, mostly in silence--hunters, if the stories are to be believed, never speak to anyone, and filling the silence felt daunting at first. But eventually, tentative at first, I told her stories--about my life at home, about my travels, about the echoes--she brightened at that. A lifetime of silence had evidently taught her to be expressive with her silence, which made me feel a lot more comfortable talking to her. But the silence felt comfortable, too, as we watched the storm, and each other.

It started to hail, and she ran to the entrance to collect some of the stones. She returned with one as big as my fist, and held it out to me. As I reached out to take it, she took my hand and gently tugged at the gloves I wore to keep the echoes at bay. Tentatively I removed the glove, and put my bare hand to the icy stone, and--(An echo: I am so glad to be sharing this with you. Such a beautiful storm. Such impressive hailstones. And maybe this hailstone will form an echo, and maybe you'll know how happy I'd be if you'd let me kiss you. Put it in your hands. Trust me.)--I gripped her hand firmly in mine and pulled her close, and let her kiss me. Then she smiled and sat down next to me again, and I rested my head on her shoulder as the pounding of the hail made an oddly soothing rhythm, punctuated by thunderclaps that by now felt almost comforting.

constellation

 There was a constellation that always used to be our favorite, back in the capital: it was, according to the stories, a legendary hero, the first dragonslayer--but the fun of it was less in the stories, though we liked those as well, as it was simply that picking out the pattern was satisfying. A simple pattern that lets you see a grander whole. Every time we'd go stargazing, which was often at first and then dwindled as time wore on, we'd point it out, and admire the shape in the stars, and sometimes one of us would tell the story again.

When I fled, I vowed I'd put that constellation behind me.

It was a slow escape, as I took it one leg at a time--at first I worried that I'd be followed, but then I liked this new ritual of sailing north until we made port, finding a room at the inn, and watching the stars, watching that constellation, so beloved and so hated, slowly sink below the horizon. It would take me a few days to find another suitable ship that was headed north, and then another few days for them to make port, and--well, you get the idea. It was a nice ritual.

It wasn't until we left the continent behind altogether that I was finally able to look up at the sky and the dragonslayer was nowhere to be seen. I was finally alone under a strange sky, where I knew none of the shapes and heroes that filled the skies. The nights were always warm and everyone was so friendly and so welcoming. When they learned how much I liked stargazing they even taught me the names of the stars here--so many different names and stories.

Sometimes I still find myself looking for that old familiar pattern, but it's only recently that I've stopped feeling awful every time I catch myself doing so. On some level, now that there's no possible way to go back, I really do miss those days. They were dreadful in so many ways, but despite all that, there were little quiet moments that will always stick with me. I even made up a constellation for her. A little pattern of stars that sort of reminds me of the one we'd look for, a few others--she would smile at that, I think.

fog

A thick fog had settled into the valley by the time I arrived, so thick the sentries didn't even challenge me as I approached. At least the gates were closed. They finally let me in after I spent a few minutes knocking as loudly as I could--"Got to keep the bandits away," they hissed as they shut the gates after me--and then I was just another poor soul out braving the freezing mists. All the windows and signs, I noticed as I wandered that desolate little town, had little tendrils of rime growing on them. 

Everything seemed so oddly quiet as I walked the streets--slow, careful steps, keeping close to the buildings so they were more than just indistinct shapes in the distance--and my footsteps, careful as they were, seemed far too loud in my ears, like they were intruding on this town's peace. Maybe I was. Maybe the fog was for me, warning me away. But if so, I ignored it. I had better things to worry about.

I found the inn by looking for a building with a fire burning, but even if the cheerful glow cut through the fog like a beacon, inside both the patrons and the serving staff seemed defeated already. They looked up as I entered, registered who I was--a sword and a red sash was enough, I think--and then fell into an expectant silence. Some of them wore faces of hope, some of trepidation.

"Didn't expect any travelers with this fog," said the innkeeper. 

"I like to defy expectations." I offered them a smile that was probably more predatory than friendly. A little fear never hurt anyone. "I hear you've had problems with bandits. I'm for hire."

The room softened. "Could be the fog's just the thing we needed," said the innkeeper, with a wry smile. "You rest a minute, get something to eat. I'll send for the man you need to talk to."

***

The man in question looked like a merchant, though he identified himself as the seneschal. There was ambition and cunning in his eyes; he gave me an evaluating look and nodded. "I assume you're offering to train up a militia? We do have a master-at-arms already, unfortunately. The problem--"

"I had something more direct in mind. You know where their camp is?"

Those ambitious eyes lit up. "I do. Or rather--"

"Your scouts do, yes. Guide me there, and I'll end the threat. The fog will be enough confusion that they can't organize a defense, and it'll make them more likely to scatter."

"Well, pull this off and you'll have quite the bounty waiting for you--and I think I could use someone of the skill you claim to possess for some . . . future endeavors. If you're interested.

He didn't trust me, but he did send his scouts to guide me to the bandits' camp. And from that shrouded vantage I walked deeper into the mists, into a future free from wandering.

waxing crescent

The instant the sun went down, Drysi found us and dragged us to one of the hidden rooftop gardens--it had probably been properly tended once, but now it ran wild. What had once been a pair little elegantly manicured trees now stretched so high they nearly blocked our view of the sky; their roots had torn up the stone of the courtyard and rendered the classrooms underneath the garden unusable. (Well, almost. It was a nice quiet place to hide, and as students of the Academy we had ample reason to spend some time hiding.) It was--and here I use Drysi's words, not my own--a little pocket of the wild in the heart of the empire. I wouldn't fully understand what she meant until many years later.

It was one of those nights where there was a thin veil of clouds, but a thin crescent moon shone through eerily, lending the clouds a soft glow and casting strange shadows in our little hidden garden. It was a beautiful sight--enough that it took me several moments to notice that there was a little glowing wisp dancing among the flowers--and they were flowers, not weeds.

"I wanted to do this right," Drysi said, behind us, as we both knelt to examine this impossible spirit. "Because you're my friends. A waxing crescent, a wild place, a spirit." The wisp settled on my finger as she spoke. "Our strength comes from the promises we make." The moon flashed, and as I turned my head to look, it grew and grew in brightness until the whole world was a blinding white.

When the world returned I was on my back in an ancient forest, lit by a giant crescent moon. As I oriented myself--"We are stronger when we see with eyes unclouded," said Drysi's voice, seeming to come from all around me--the roots I was lying on gently lifted me to my feet. I was barefoot now, dressed in a thin grey robe rather than the white Academy uniform we'd all been wearing moments before. I was also alone, and all around me there was underbrush and deadfall, except before me, where a path of soft-looking leaves was laid out.

Of course I followed it. The giddy excitement of being invited to a secret rendezvous by the girl I loved--and we were still just girls then, young and foolish girls with no idea what the world had in store for us--had faded, but I felt no fear. I trusted her, but more than that, I could sense that this was important. I followed the path until I came upon a spring, the water of which glowed with the same soft light as the wisp.

In my memory, the woman who waited for me there looked like Drysi, but I knew instantly that this was simply a shape she wore. At first I thought she wore it to please me, then I realized--perhaps this was the only human she knew? She smiled at me, and welcomed me, and it's only in recollection that I realize that she never actually spoke any words.

"You're the wisp," I said. It wasn't a question, but she affirmed that she was regardless. But she was more than that: she was the forest and the spring; she was the little wild garden on the rooftop. She was ancient as the oldest trees and as young as a wildflower in the spring.

If I drank from the spring, I understood--or perhaps she really did explain it to me?--it would be sealing a pact between us: she would offer me her protection, and in return I would make a promise, in something deeper than words. (That promise I keep to myself. I understood then, though, that here where the spirit ruled, the act of making a promise changed us both.)

I drank from the spring, and the spirit seemed different somehow, more substantial, less like someone wearing another's face and more like she wore a shape of her own. It was no coincidence, I think, that the new shape reminded me of myself. "Remember me, on your travels," she said--and here she did use words--"as I shall remember you."

The world faded and I found myself back in the little hidden garden. My sister and I were lying against the trunks of the two trees, and Drysi knelt between us, holding each of our hands in hers. And behind her, seeming to dissipate into the moonlight, was a faint wisp of light that seemed to have taken on a human shape.

The moon set early that night, and we withdrew to the abandoned overgrown classroom beneath the garden, feeling both giddy and subdued. The world seemed different, somehow--which is to say, we were different. Neither my sister nor I realized it at the time, though Drysi surely did, that this promise had set us free. And every time that thin sliver of moon emerged from new, I'd always make a little offering to the nameless spirit that granted us that freedom.

dark clouds

The summer before the war was endlessly hot, and endlessly full of arguing. Arguments in the Council about how to rule, arguments in the inner circle about how to navigate the city's politics, or occasionally just about how irritating we found each other. I took to staring out the window at the sky, for all the good that did me. There was never a cloud in sight.

It was one of the latter arguments that first marked a change. Nevena was yelling at Drysi about something, which was only surprising because she usually waited to do her yelling until they were alone (but everyone could tell she wanted to anyway), and no, I couldn't be bothered to pay attention. It was unbearably hot--almost unimaginably hot, so hot even the Princess had abandoned proper court dress in favor of something light and loose-fitting. (I imagine the heat is why she also was irritable enough to yell instead of merely suggest that she felt yelling was desirable.) But there were clouds in the sky--small, fluffy ones at first, but moving and growing and darkening as I watched--and suddenly all the oppressive heat and humidity suddenly felt like it might be building to something.

"What are you smiling at?" This was directed at me--Drysi, who seldom rose to the Princess's bait but wasn't above ignoring her if she thought it would be funny, interrupted her serene highness in mid-sentence.

Was I smiling? I hadn't realized. I gestured at the window. "Dark clouds gathering, look. There's going to be a storm."

Everyone stopped to look at the clouds, and a strange silence settled over us as we watched them grow. The promise of the gathering clouds had, for a moment at least, stolen the heat from the argument, provided a moment of relief from the endless tyranny of summer.

stars

The first night after I left the Princess's service--too late, alas, to join my love in her wanderings--I had nothing except my sword and my convictions to keep me safe from the elements, and neither of those are much good for that. The snowmelt and an early spring storm had me soaked and shivering by midday, and I had no real recourse except to keep moving, hoping that in so doing I could keep myself warm enough that I wouldn't freeze to death. I think, more than anything, it was stubbornness that kept me alive: I hadn't survived such a bitter winter only to die of snowmelt when spring finally came.

I found a trader on the road, an intrepid soul who saw the spring as an opportunity to make a small fortune selling basic items to the army as luxuries. He practically beamed when he saw my colors--the Princess's blue and white--and that I was alone and bedraggled as a deserter, desperate to not be quite so obviously a dead woman walking. And he charged me a small fortune for some dry clothes and a backpack and some essentials, which I paid happily, and then I left the roads and cut across country because that was a man who would sell out my location to anyone who wanted it if he thought he might get a tarnished copper bit out of it.

The clouds cleared up by nightfall, leaving only a glittering canopy of stars behind, undimmed by the light and smoke of campfires and unconcerned with the petty affairs of we mortals walking the earth below. And what can you say to that? What can you do when, cold and sore and hungry and exhausted and utterly lost, you are confronted with the evidence that even now, at your very lowest, the universe is absolutely beautiful and absolutely indifferent to your plight?

I hadn't allowed myself to weep since the war started--or rather, I hadn't allowed myself to weep since I started questioning the Princess, the figure who had loomed largest in my life until that point. It had been years. I'd promised myself I wouldn't--at first, because I feared that it meant I had lost faith in her, and then, once I'd lost faith in her, because I refused to let myself be weak for her. (It was a foolish promise made by a foolish girl; I like to think I am wiser now, however much my folly has cost me.) Eventually it was stubborn pride: I'd made a promise to myself, and I would feel deeply ashamed if I broke it. I wept then. The stars, to their credit, did not care.

new moon

There's an old story that the moon was put in the night's sky to guide us during the long dark of the night; there are dozens of folk stories with various morals derived from that, of course, but it was always a beloved icon of the church, a reminder that the Creator was watching over us. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that as society began to shift its focus away from the works of the divine and onto the works of humankind, the night of the new moon took on a special significance: this is our night. The night when the protection of the divine has been withdrawn, and we poor citizens of the world are left to fend for ourselves--and look, we say, look at all we have done. And so the Festival of Night was born. The priests don't like it, especially the conservative ones, but for so much of the festival's existence, it was deeply religious, a night of thanks to the Creator for trusting their children to fend for themselves, for letting them live and think and reason and build great cities and mighty empires. In recent years, the tone has shifted, of course, as the works of the church and religion have come under scrutiny as the ranks of skeptics and nonbelievers swelled to numbers that would have been unfathomable a mere century ago. So the festival has taken on a defiant stance: look, we say, look at what we can do.

I write this now because it was the Festival of Night last night, and the Prince was assassinated in front of a crowd. And the festival, a time both sacred and profane--I can't help but wonder why it was chosen. Superstition, perhaps--perhaps the Divine won't punish regicide committed on the night where they have left creation to its own devices--or perhaps it was political, a message that the Prince's tame participation in his city's ancient festival would not be tolerated. (But if so, by whom? Have the priests ceded the ceremony to its enemies so soon?)

Nevena--the new Princess, I suppose--had the misfortune of having me as her companion on this night. Just hours ago she was talking about how she always felt hopeful on the eve of the new moon, that it represented so much unrealized potential, and now she is numbly staring out from her balcony at the moonless sky, while I sit at her desk and write my thoughts on her father's death. It feels important to chronicle these moments.

It also feels important to offer her a shoulder to cry on, to offer some words, to focus not on the historical magnitude of the moment but on the grief and horror she is feeling, right now. I did my best. I sat with her for a while, staring at the moonless sky, and though we didn't speak, she still turned to me with a thin smile and said thank you. Kind of her to let this poor historian feel like she had any use in situations like these.

And so I returned here, to this little desk, using her lamp and her pen and her paper. And while I will be called upon to answer all of the questions about the implications of this later, right now, while I try to make myself useful as a friend, I'm thinking about the new moon. I hope, for her sake, that she is still able to look at the empty sky and feel that there are bright days to come.

rainy day

My biggest concern, now that I've been free for so long, is that people will forget that she was, at heart, just a person. Sometimes I still think about the rainy days we'd spend together--stuck in the Academy, stuck in the palace, they all run together now. I'm imagining her in court dress running through the halls of the Academy, or in academic white in the halls of the palace. I don't know which part is accurate--maybe none of it is. Maybe it's made up, or maybe this one actually took place at my family's estate, or at the opera house, or . . .

What drew me to her is how passionate she was about whatever she had discovered recently. A book, an opera--it wasn't so much that she dreamed of being a philosopher-princess but that she was bound to become one. I can still see the glint in her eye, hear the barely contained enthusiasm in her voice, as she waxes poetic on the latest essays of her favorite philosopher, or describes the scene she loved most in the latest theatrical production. She spent so much of her life on guard, afraid that her enthusiasm might hold too much sway, but around me, at least, she let that guard down. And even after everything she's done--everything she did to me--I still miss those days. I'd never know where the conversation was going, and I'm not sure I ever really held my own, but I loved it.

Does this make her sound flighty? Perhaps she was. Perhaps after all these years, Princess Nevena IV, the dread figure that shattered the world, was just an excitable girl, who loved ideas and people too easily, who dreamed of a brighter future and couldn't settle on what that meant. I'm not sure anyone else got to see that side of her, but until the last time I saw her, that was who she was to me. Eager, enthusiastic, confident, and ever changing.

So, as scholars attempt to write a history of what happened, of her life, of what went wrong, I can't stop thinking of that time we sat on the rooftops of the Academy, huddled together in the rain, while she talked about all the dreams she had, what she wanted to do when the throne was hers, how she would make the world better with everything she had learned and studied. And I remember falling in love with that excitement, that energy, all over again.

wind

There used to be a kingdom here--or, no, they wouldn't have used that word. But there was something so much more than a handful of villages trading with each other. Someone built these roads, and maintained them; more than a few brave souls travelled them. And now it's just ruins, lost and overgrown; and I've always felt compelled to explore those lost places, to learn about the world we lost. Or maybe compelled isn't strong enough. Driven, perhaps? The echoes that linger in these old places call to me.

My companion tells me that where she's from, there's a coming of age ritual where a young person will take the surname Windtossed and go out into the world. Not everyone goes through the ritual--there are plenty who are happy to work on the family farm, or learn a trade, or otherwise stay with the clan--but any who feel so called are encouraged to go chase the wind. It's nice to imagine what it would have been like if my family and my hometown had encouraged my journeys rather than begging me to stay because they don't believe I can take care of myself.

Though we've been travelling together for a while now, my companion won't talk about her own wanderings; I'm left to imagine why she follows me, where she's from, who she really is. But she believes in me, and she has saved my life more times than I could count. And every morning when I wake up she's still there, standing watch, spear in hand, hair and cloak being tossed by the wind. A wanderer couldn't ask for a better companion.

dawn

When I received an invitation to one of the future Princess's salons, my first thought--after the obvious ones, I suppose--was that I was almost certainly there as decoration. Someone had seen one of my performances and liked my voice or just thought I was pretty enough that they wanted me there, and I had to stop myself from continuing down that line because along that road cynicism runs wild. Of course I accepted, and of course I dressed in the finest dress I had, and of course I was so nervous that for the first hour or so I could barely string a sentence together. It was a small gathering--half a dozen people or so, many of whom came and went as casually as if this were not the most prestigious gatherings in the city--and though the wine flowed freely that night I drank only water and still felt drunk on everything--the atmosphere, the ideas. 

At some point one of the city's eminent philosophers asked me a question--I couldn't even tell you what it was now, except that it was clear he had expected a demure "I don't know" in response. Instead, summoning what composure I could from my stage training, I answered honestly, and thoughtfully, and in my opinion insightfully. And then there was a stunned silence, someone laughed, and someone else said, "I told you she'd be interesting to have around."

I understood then. The allure wasn't the prestige, but the sense that here, status meant nothing. It didn't matter if I was just a singer; so long as I had something interesting to say, I would be accepted as an equal here. And what an allure it was, that a room full of the city's sharpest minds could continue planning their campaign against the darkness, the malaise that we all sensed settling over the city, and that eventually by wit and reason alone that darkness could be purged.

As the night wore on most of the guests retired, but a few of us stayed, talking, joking, arguing--none of it mattered, or perhaps more precisely, it all mattered. No matter how exhausted I got, I felt like everything we said or did there would somehow shape the world for the better.

We stopped, both of us who still remained, when dawn came. One of my companions walked me back home, and the sky was such a brilliant red when we finally reached the sad little tenement I called my lodgings. To my surprise I invited her in--"It seems rude to make you walk all the way back to the palace when the sun's already risen"--and to my even greater surprise she accepted. And though we were both too exhausted to do anything but sleep, at least, with dawn watching over us, I fell asleep feeling, for once, warm and hopeful.

quiet clouds

I don't know why I didn't go home once I'd severed my alliance with the Princess. We both could have gone, me and my constant companion, and enjoyed the safety and comfort of my estate; instead, once the thaw came, we wandered. It seemed that everywhere we went, the war had left chaos and instability in its wake: deserters who became bandits who became warlords here, a corrupt magistrate taking advantage of the chaos to line his pockets there. Sometimes they welcomed us, sometimes they drove us away. We helped where we could. When we couldn't find work, we foraged for food; when the imperial highways started to fill with soldiers we left the roads behind.

We were tired, we were hungry, and we were putting our lives at risk, and even when we were able to help, it felt so small. So often it felt like we were at best buying them time, that everything we did--driving off the warlords, exposing the magistrates--would simply lead to a temporary power vacuum. And we could hardly stay and prevent someone else from returning.

It became harder as we traveled to pay attention to anything but the road ahead of us. I knew that we were in a mountain valley and had even stopped to admire some of the views when my companion pointed them out, but my eyes remained fixed on the trail, and all the sounds of the wilds faded to nothing but the dull tread of my boots.

My companion had stopped, and I wearily asked what the problem was. She simply gestured upwards. A beautiful set of quiet clouds had formed above the mountains, drifting through the sky and along the slopes as I watched.

"I'll make camp," she told me.

I found a fallen log to sit on and just watched the clouds. Somewhere out there, the war was ravaging even more lands, but there were still quiet, beautiful moments out there, and for a moment I was able to convince myself that maybe the reason I was still wandering was so I could find them.

waning crescent

I always had an affinity with the moon, ever since I was little. I'd stay up late--later than I was supposed to, but even then none of my caretakers dared to stop me--and sneak out onto one of the palace balconies and just stare up at the moon, and felt elation as it waxed and sorrow as it waned. 

It's so easy to lose track of the moon's phases, though, when you're busy. And I was, of course I was, even when my father was alive. I had so much I needed to do before the city was mine. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that when I was coronated, I forgot to check the moon. It was a waning crescent, days before new. A moon in decline.

I told myself I'd grown out of superstition. I tried to convince myself that the phase of the moon meant nothing about the fate of the city, that I would not be ruling over the final days of a waning realm. I had so much to accomplish. I had so many dreams. The days ahead should have been our brightest; but as I saw that moon hanging over the ocean, my new crown already too heavy on my head, I had the conviction that each passing night would only be darker.

That night, when the crowds of disingenuous well-wishers had dispersed, I stayed up late like I used to and stared at the moon and tried to understand, or at least to recapture that sense of wonder I'd had as a child. But it remained impenetrable as ever, and eventually wine and exhaustion forced me to retire.

I drifted through the next day too distracted to think of anything else. Eventually one of my friends--or perhaps she was an adviser now?--finally realized this wasn't just a hangover, and pulled me aside. "You seem worried."

I tried to assure her I was fine, but at that moment I lost control and started to cry, silently. She held me, awkwardly, as I struggled to compose myself once again.

"Tell me what's wrong?" she said, once I had regained my composure.

And I tried. I tried to explain about the moon, and how despite everything, I still worried about symbols and omens. "No," I said, as a revelation occurred. "it's not worry. It's a certainty. I will be the last Princess of this city."

She watched me for a while--I never did learn to read her face, even after growing up with her, and she was always one to keep her thoughts to herself--then said, "Someone had to be. You may as well pretend you're wrong, though." I frowned at her, and she cracked a thin smile. "Rule well, and either you make the last days of a waning empire better, or you lay the groundwork for a brighter future. Worry and despair doesn't help anyone."

I glanced up at the afternoon sky then and saw the thin sliver of moon there, barely visible against the pale blue sky, and I wondered, if it was an omen, what kind it was meant to be.

a prelude for october

October at last. Autumn has truly started here--the leaves have turned, there's a chill in the air, the rains have already started falling . . . sometimes I get a little emotional the first time a real autumn storm happens. I love this season, and I love this month.

This is the month of Halloween, a holiday whose aesthetic I've always loved. I still remember going all out decorating and dressing up as a kid, wanting the season to never end. Part of that, of course, is just fall--the colors, the leaves, the smell of fallen leaves, the chill in the air--but the holiday itself, and by extension the month it occupies, also has a special place in my heart. Jack-o-lanterns and spooky ghosts and skeletons and little cartoony gravestones that say RIP on them. (Though I know at least one person who hates when people say this, I'm not actually that into horror as a genre; I'm mostly here for the fun and whimsy. But horror fans getting excited for their favorite movies makes me happy, so I'm not complaining either.)

There's an A Softer World which describes Halloween as the only time of year you can really dress for the job you want, and Jason Webley has been known to introduce some of his seasonal songs by saying that it is the one night of year when we can take off our masks and reveal who we really are (I'm sure there's a recording of this somewhere but I'm too lazy to search; sorry). There's something about that, I think: the way we celebrate it, Halloween is ostensibly a night of masquerade, but there's an element of masquerade that allows us to be a little more honest about who we are. That is, wearing a real mask makes it a little easier to drop the metaphorical ones.

I don't really have a point here, or even a good way to segue into this next bit: I'm going to try once again to write a little something every day this month, because it's a fun challenge. I'm planning on using this set of prompts, which given my endless fascination with the sky and weather probably shouldn't require explanation, though I think I'll try to reshuffle the moon days around so they correspond with this year's phases rather than with, I presume, those of 2019.

Normally I'd try to mix in some observations on news and the world, and maybe some personal anecdotes to tie it all together, but this month I have nothing much to say. I'm glad fall is here; I'm still tired, society is still on edge from the pandemic, hope still feels firmly grounded in folly. The year is drawing rapidly to a close and things still feel both stagnant and precarious.

Regardless, I hope the season is treating you well. I hope that it is exactly as spooky as you'd like it to be. I hope you are pleasantly surprised by a gust of wind, that you can watch the leaves dancing against a stormy sky. I hope, even if it's only for one night, you can take off your mask and be who you truly are.