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.