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.