Work Text:
Listen sweet traveller, and hear the calls of the long passed, the dead and forgotten,
Which take wing at night and in their depression, lessen;
Are the singers of the goddess of the night;
The lady of archers and of southwestern Dagda, our Shamir.
Long has she lived, upon this earth of Fódlan,
Where her followers gasp and fall in prayer at her dim, lacy altar;
Her duty is to bring about night; so sweetly she is called the moonlight guardian;
Who pledges allegiance to the divine Saint Serios without falter.
She rides upon the backs of a moonlit pegasus,
Whose body becomes starlight, and brings the constellations.
Her duty is sovereign, her life bound thus
—by the night, the stars, the moon and the moon’s tides that bring about titillation—
And her resolve is unparalleled, which has earned the Saint’s deep trust.
In her carriage of night, pulled by the stars
She is greeted by her accomplice, the lady of light of day;
Who crosses the skies with her sword of the sun, scraping from near and far,
Who is affectionately called Catherine, or so they say.
Legend says that dear Catherine and dour Shamir were once humans, like you and I,
But came from warring states, from enemy sides;
After brief romance, their swords and arrows pierced each other’s skin, and in their separate sorrow, died.
But Serios was merciful, and reincarnated their souls, upon Garland’s ides,
To be the keepers and guardians of day and night,
To bring about dusk’s stars and dawn’s daylight,
With the kiss of dawn and dusk.
And though they are parted, by skies and stars,
Seiros and Sothis are merciful, bringing about the sky’s charge.
The muses of Faerghus’s three,
The singers of Adrestia,
And the musicians of Leicester all retell the sorrowful and sweet union
Of Shamir and Catherine, who bring about day and night;
And although parted for their lives, still may find each other
At the kiss of dawn and dusk.
Hark! Here she comes now, upon her pegasus of white and silver;
Upon the mark of the east, where the sun begins to rise, is her Catherine,
Burning in white-hot armour, and a sword of flames; the warmth to Shamir’s robes of frozen night and bow of starlight.
Her pegasus flies, taking along the stars and moon which it pilfers,
As she embraces the sun’s warmth and tender embrace.
With a struggling breath of relief, the last breath of night and the first gasp of morning,
The guardian of night, and knight of day, meet
At the kiss of dawn and dusk.
Shamir, our shepherdess of the stars, fades onto the other side of the mountains,
Leaving her lover with a sorrowful and sweet kiss;
As she passes into slumber upon daylight’s rays
And dreams of her Catherine, which she will meet again,
When the night birds sing,
When her pegasus cries,
When the air grows still,
Then her Catherine meets her again at the edge of day and the cusp of night,
And guiding the sun and clouds for some long period, grows tired and must rest,
After their kiss of dawn and dusk.