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“I cannot believe you woke us up for this. It’s past midnight.”
Sasha Waybright wrapped her arms around herself, planting her feet a little more firmly onto the surface of the cottage’s roof. A sudden hand on her shoulder almost sent her toppling off.
Said hand belonged to Marcia Wu, who’s eyes were shining with excitement and starlight. “Oh, come on Sasha. The sky is the clearest it’s been in months! You can see every star - isn’t that worth losing some sleep over? Anne agrees, don’t you, Anne?”
Anastasia Boonchuy - once princess of the land, now runaway with a price on her head - blinked. She’d been distracted by the gentle bickering of the other two, and was caught off guard when addressed.
“Uh - yeah!” Then she looked up and, reminiscing, she added, “Back in the city, you could hardly see the stars, with all the torches burning throughout the night. I’ve never seen so many before.” Looking back at her companions, she asked, “Have you, Sash?”
The assassin nodded. “Sometimes, when my…work took me far, I’d camp out in the woods. And it would feel like the stars and I were the only thing left in the entire world.” Her features softened. “Maybe it is worth losing sleep over.”
Marcy - satisfied - plopped down on the roof, slipping out her notebook. She looked up at Sasha with an unabashed curiosity. “Do you know anything about the stars?”
Sasha hesitated for only a moment before sitting next to Marcy. “Only one.”
Anne, growing curious herself, sat down on Marcy’s other side and prompted, “What?”
Sasha glanced at her for a moment before turning her gaze away towards the sky. Under the moonlight, the scar on her face was almost impossible to see.
“There,” she said, pointing. “That cluster of stars…it’s called the Northern Dagger. The blade will always point north. So as long as you can see it, you’re never truly lost.”
“Fitting that that’s what you know,” Anne teases, and is rewarded with a quick smirk from Sasha.
“Interesting…” Marcy mused, writing something down. “I have noticed that those stars never change positions.”
Sasha snorts. “Of course you have.”
Anne leans towards Marcy, and softly asks “What else have you noticed?”
The light in Marcy’s eyes grows. “It’s not that I’ve noticed as much as it is that I’ve learned. Here,” she gestures for the other two to come closer. They do, Anne’s arm pressed up against Marcy. She could put her head on her shoulder, if she wanted to.
She kind of wanted to.
Before she could dwell on it, Marcy traces a finger in the air and says, “See, there? That…almost - swirl of stars. That’s the Aitheria constellation. It’s been said that it was originally the name of a knight, who fought in the most terrible of battles. They would always emerge victorious, but they never gloated or asked for any rewards. Instead, they would always return to the battlefield the day after the battle and plant a single rainflower. Eventually, they were mortally wounded. As they died, all the rainflowers they planted through the years bloomed at once. Rain fell from the flowers upwards into the sky, and every drop became the constellation we’re looking at now.”
At some point, Anne’s gaze had returned to Marcy. She realized this a moment too late, after Marcy turned towards her and caught her stare.
Anne felt her heart skip a few beats, mind already whirring for something to say, until Sasha broke the silence by saying, “That’s not very practical.”
The other two looked at her in confusion. “What isn’t practical?” Anne questioned.
“The - the constellation. There’s no use to knowing it.”
“I don’t think so!” Marcy cheerfully disagreed. “I think it’s a needed reminder that there is no true glory in war. Aitheria’s rainflowers were meant to represent their regret for what they had to do. They remembered all who fell, and when they died, the flowers weeped for them and immortalized them in the sky.”
Sasha looked at Marcy, an unreadable expression on her face. “Huh. I didn’t think of it like that.” A moment of silence passed, then - almost as if she didn’t mean to - she asked, “Do you think we’ll be remembered?”
Anne watched as Marcy tapped her fingers against her notebook before answering. “I think so. We may not get our own constellations, but…we have each other. And we can always plant a few rainflowers.”
Sasha smiled, replying to Marcy but looking at Anne, “I’d like that.”
“I’d like that, too,” Anne said.
The three them share this moment in silence, gentle and smiling. Anne feels something in her chest grow, something warm and electrifying, and a part of her never wants to leave this roof.
As if she too wanted to extend the time they spent up here, Sasha pokes Anne’s side and inquires, “What about you, princess? Any starry stories?”
Anne begins to protest, but then a memory surfaces in her mind - one so old she’d forgotten it entirely. Until now.
She turns to the sky, looking. Her eyes burn with sudden, unshed tears, but she finds what she wants.
“There,” she points out, ignoring the shakiness of her voice. “Those glowing stars, the ones that seem almost purple. They’re called the Vermilion Dragonfly.”
She can feel the weight of Sasha and Marcy’s gaze. She takes a deep breath and pushes forward.
“My mom told me about them. When I was child. How dragonflies would spend the day as bugs on earth, but at night, they’d return to the sky. We used to…”
Her throat burns. She remembers the soft brush of her mother’s hand against her face, remembers hunting for dragonflies with Sprig and showing them to her mother, proud. Her mother, gone.
A sudden presence to her left startles her out of her thoughts. Anne realizes that now she is in the middle, Sasha to her left and Marcy to her right.
Marcy takes hold of one of Anne’s hands, then Sasha the other, tentatively.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha murmurs. Marcy squeezes her hand, a silent reassurance.
And Anne lets the tears fall, but she smiles and pulls the other two closer. Their arms slip around each other, and Anne is relieved to find that instead of feeling trapped, she feels safe.
“Thank you,” she whispers. Neither girl responds, but there’s no need to.
And under a blanket of stars and constellations and stories and memories, the three of them drift off to sleep, right there on the roof of a cottage that has begun to feel like home.