laugh hard, it’s a long way to the ground; any

[Carinae]

astra inclinant, non necessitant ------ (the stars incline; they do not compel) She walks at the witching hour. It is not because she is any kind of demon or witch. It is because nighttime – especially heartbreakingly clear nights such as these – is where the stars are closer, when she can throw her head back and stare at them till her eyes burn. It is because this is the time when her coat becomes black, scattered with stars, mirroring the night sky. It’s nostalgic and lovely and makes her think, as she so often does, of space, of their timelessness when she had always reflected the stars because everything had been stars, stars up and down and all around her. Now she is terrestrial, though she does not know what catalyst caused her to become so. Her heart-home is the stars, so she has found nowhere within Beqanna to stay. She wanders, nomadic, sees ice-lands and jungles and deserts, but mostly she just stays in the meadow. The meadow, she knows, is where her type belong – the nomads, with their restless hearts and fickle faiths. Though she finds it easy not to speak (she is not truly an alien but it feels like that sometimes, how she is sky-colored and was born amongst black holes and nebulas, how her mother was a star and her father, a god), she does grow lonely. In space there was always sister her mirror-twin. Here there are a few faces (including a joyous, tailless boy), but none were constants in the way sister was, not even close. She walks at witching hour on the cloudless night, a constellation draped across her back, wishing, as always, on all the stars. carinae