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For someone who could see both, Vassago thought about the past a lot more than the future.
He remembered sitting with Andrealphus, in the height of their adolescence when he cared more about his study. He said Stolas was unfit for astronomy. Why? Because Stolas didn't measure.
The cosmos had an order, he said. Planets moved in cycles. Perfectly. That was a word he used a lot. The lines they moved along, they were fractals. Each vertex the exact same, in its expected place, every time; perfect.
A snowflake fell. It always snowed when he talked about geometry. Andrealphus showed it to him: this was the universe.
Vassago didn’t need to see it to know that. He already saw it in Andrealphus’ feathers. His walk. His dress. His face. The way crystals branched beneath him. Perfect.
He hardly heard the rest, but one thing caught his attention. That was how they danced. Endlessly, they danced. Moving along spinning snowflakes. They made loops, coming closer to move away, synchronizing celestial tapestries from past to future.
Space and time. When one moved forward, the other moved back.
All those years of heartache. Vassago never realized he had been dancing the whole time.