Chapter Text
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
- William Shakespeare.
~.~.~
When the air was calm and the seas stilled, they whispered to him.
When the world slowed under the weight of a starless night and the glow of the watchful moon paled against the darkness of the abyss beyond, they were silent. Not a murmur carried on the breeze; not a word nor hint ever reached him, muffled under thick clouds, choking out their voices. And on those days he felt desolate. On those days he felt like a candle without a light – useless, without purpose, wandering the night restlessly.
But every so often when the night was clear and the clouds departed; when the breeze sighed gently in the grass atop the cliffs and the waves slowed, as if lulled to sleep under the brilliant moon above; when the tranquil night was ablaze with the light of a thousand stars above… They whispered, their voices carried down from the heavens to meet him, gentle undertones like music to his ears that intertwined with the rustle of greenery and the breath of the sea. And on those nights he would wait atop his roof and he would bathe in the light of the stars and the moon and he would feel blessed. Blessed to truly realise the beauty of this world. Blessed to be alive beneath their ethereal glow. Blessed to be a part of their counsel, for, the stars, they spoke each with voices of their own. They carried thousands of years of weight and knowledge and tales beyond recall of man; of stories written in the patterns they wove across the sky. Here an archer took down his foe with his mighty bow and arrow; there stood a lion, its roar thundering through the void; and far over yonder where the sky touched the sea, maidens danced on a glassy stage, lit by moonbeams, until the sun rose up from the west.
But far more important to him than these tales of old were those much subtler voices – the ones that were hushed and lost in the clamour of all their neighbours; that were much more desperate to reach his ears. They spoke of things that were yet to come. They told him of things that were meant to be, that had been written down before their time. Many of them brought sorrow and dismay. Conflict was coming, they said. Death would visit that home above the inn, they said as well. He had found himself privy to many misfortunes before they had occurred over the years, but sometimes, just occasionally, something more hopeful would find its way through and excitement would bloom within his chest at the sound of some gentle voice whispering in his ear. And it was these voices that made his time beneath the stars so much sweeter.
He had known tonight that one such voice would find its way to him before they had even stirred. He had mapped the progress of the stars his entire life. He had seen the way they rose and fell and rose again and he felt his heart leap with joy each night when that first little pinprick burst into life at the setting of the sun. But tonight he felt an ecstatic glee as he stared up at the sky and marvelled at his discovery. A constellation stood out against the inky blue of the heavens to the east. He watched it with eyes wide, faced bathed in the tranquil glow, and he smiled knowingly, his voice a breath on the wind.
“It shines again...”
And, the murmurs on the breeze seemed to answer;
The Marionette shines.
And to the west a second shone, though far brighter, and he was baffled, for he had had to scan the sky he so well knew many times to find it, for, the stars, they moved and danced and crept across the darkness as their stories were set into motion. They drifted, unaware themselves that their tale - their fate that would be set in the constellations for all eternity - had begun to steer them down the path set out for them. He called it fate. Destiny. Doom. It didn’t matter. Fate wouldn’t wait. Fate would fill the wind in their sails and kick up the waves and send them sailing off onto their proper course.
“It has begun.”
And the stars, hung like crystals in a chandelier across the night, whispered;
They are moving.
~.~.~