Favor Those Who Hold the Fire
Favor Those Who Hold the Fire
Something fell to the floor; a splintering crash followed by five thuds that rang like stone striking stone. She fell, too. She was bleeding badly, the burnt-skin smell acrid in each breath, but darkness came as the world wobbled around her like a porcelain vase about to topple…
“Your Highness?”
She woke, and realized she was waking, and wild hope surged in her heart. It was a dream, please let it all be a dream, I’d forgive you any nightmare if I could just hold you now– but she opened her eyes to a shattered throne room dimly lit by torchlight, and scattered over the floor around a star-shaped crater lay five dull faceted lumps of stone, all cold and remote to her magical sense. She was on silken bedding; she saw the stitches running up her left foreleg and ointment on the red patches of skin with hair burnt away, but she had not been moved from where she had fallen. A hole in the ceiling showed scattered stars in wild disorder, and most of the moon, and… her sister’s face, that dear sweet face burned into the sky like an epitaph. Her throat tightened against her breath and she squeezed her aching eyes shut again.
“Your Highness? I am so sorry, please forgive us, we would not disturb you if we had any choice…” It was her unicorn seneschal, along with the royal physician, and an attending squad of guards, also with burnt hide and stitched wounds, who kept their eyes averted. “The doctor said you should not be moved from the throne room. We tried to make you comfortable here.”
She would never be comfortable anywhere again. She started to lower her head, to seek the insensibility of sleep.
“Your Highness? Please hear us, we beg you,” he persisted. “We have tried over and over to raise the Sun, and we have failed. It does not respond to us. It does not… seem to want to respond.”
“How long?” she croaked in a voice of ashes.
“Three days by the tower clock, your highness. We could not bear to disturb your rest, but the plants are wilting, the winds unresponsive to the pegasi. Please, Your Highness–”
They were right, and it wasn’t fair that they were right. No one should have to fight as hard as they could, to the edge of death, just to sever every connection they had to one they loved, and then have to pretend that nothing happened and just make the world go on as usual. Her words froze on her lips, poisoned by how unjust it was.
“Your Highness…” The seneschal was a brave fellow, but she heard the tremor in his voice that he was trying to hide. “…we need you.”
She drew breath, but there were just too many things to say, and no way to phrase them so that her subjects would both understand and not take offense. Instead, she allowed them to gently and deferentially coax her upright, and surround her with guards who pressed as close to the royal presence as they dared, to support her in case she toppled. With slow deliberate steps, they escorted her to the grand tower, where she mounted the curved stairs as a prisoner might ascend to the gallows, grim stolid supporters before and behind her. When she reached the parapet, she heard the intake of breath from the assembled crowd, then a cheer. A cheer that ground her heart to powder. She winced, and her seneschal motioned for the crowd to be silent.
She sought within herself for the power. She called out to the sacred gems once again, seeking their familiar comfort, but their inner song had turned into a strident cacophony, and whatever it was they now sang, they would not include her in it. She had lost so much, now that the Elements were beyond her. Would the Sun spurn her likewise?
She tried not to think about it, for first the Moon had to descend. It fought her as if it were nailed to the sky; it did not want to leave. This additional burden was too much. She wanted to kneel and beg it to go, to release its distant prisoner, to roll backward through the sky and undo the days and make everything a might-have-been, with one more chance to avoid it all… She pushed with more force then she could spare, then there was a hint of movement. The lunar orb shuddered, then cast away four stars that had seemingly pinned it to the firmament, and then the Moon and its frozen face were sliding down the sky and under the earth like a burial (no no not that no) and now the sky was clear and dark.
Fighting the urge to gasp, she breathed slowly and deeply, on the verge of passing out, as her strength trickled back into her. Those four stars had been part of a powerful design that was one of Luna’s favorites. Was that what that one prophecy had meant, that the four must reunite to allow redemption? How long would it take? She would need to take precise observations over time to plot the true course of those stars, but still she tried to gain a hint from bare eyesight of how long it might be before they worked their way across the sky. They looked as if they were already slowing. It could take months. A year? She couldn’t survive a year alone, without her.
Maybe it’ll be ten years, whispered a dark part of her mind. Maybe a hundred– She wrenched her thoughts away, shivering. Hundreds of eyes were still upon her, dimly gleaming under the starshine, and the still air was cold and damp as all the world waited.
She cast her magic along the old familiar paths and ground her teeth as she reached out to the sun, and at last she felt a hint of contact; but the solar orb felt heavy and rigid, and her love was a sad sundered thing that could not speak to it as before. As she strained in despair, she saw the faces in the crowd; they were expectant, tense, hopeful, their concern for her as one with their need for crop rotation schedules and paperwork and other ephemeralities. For their sake, she had ripped her soul in half and banished one side from the world. And they had probably rejoiced when they heard the news.
Ah, now that was a fruitful conduit: along with her anger grew the spark of connection, until she almost felt the flames flickering in her mind as a new power grew in her heart. It would be so easy now to just seize it and pull, and bring it right to her. She could envision the growing golden glow at the horizon, their silly cheers and their revolting celebration at the resumption of natural order, then their stunned incomprehension and growing horror as the fiery sphere descended upon them, as the flames wiped them and their little troubles away forever, and cleansed the ground, and relieved her pain. Is this how it felt for you, my beloved sister? Is this what gave you such strength that it ruined me to resist you?
As the vision flowed through her mind and quickened her heartbeat, the great orb of the sun responded to her ire, and in a glorious red rush, it ascended almost eagerly over the horizon to inflame the sky, casting a heated glow over the misty forests and lining the castle parapet with angry light. The crowd below started to dance and shout. With a glassy smile on her face, she held the Sun there, hanging far over their heads, perfectly within her command, as their oblivious happy faces wept and beamed up at her from below. If they didn’t stop that damned cheering soon, that might decide it.
And a small calm part of her took comfort and courage, for that it was still a choice.
