Standing Under A Thunderstorm of Falling Stars

Moment the First

It is midsummer’s eve during a comet shower, the first time Cato and Solveig meet. Cato is on the rooftop of the palace. He is stretched out with his hands under his head and his formal jacket is carelessly thrown over the tiling. He is watching the stars, who are said to be one’s dead ancestors who are watching and guiding and taking wishes from their kin who still walk the earth.

As a star falls, he makes a wish to be just a boy, not a prince, not a soldier, or a royal who can tap into the astral and would have been a Druadin if not for his position as heir to Camalosian throne. He wonders what ancestor has just returned to the earth for another lifetime.

He does not wish to be a member of House Claris, the longest ruling family of all the Kingdoms across the Continent and all the great heroes and villains that come with that long history.

Camalos has been at war for too many generations, and House Claris has led the charge for it all, because of their link with the astral, the Druadin Order, and the legends of those who walked the great World Tree and stepped among the stars.

“One day I will visit you all,” he whispers to the stars, stretching a hand out as if he could grasp one as they fell, streaking across the midnight sky, leaving threads of silver and gold. “I will make all of you proud, and though I feel like I am too many things rolled into one, I will be good King. I will more than just the next king. I will be a King worthy of joining you in the sky one day.  

As he watches the star he wished upon fall behind the mountains beyond the city, the sound of rustling fabric, the thump of feet and then a shout of alarm are his only warning that another person has invaded his secret hideaway.

Then a body falls across Cato with a gasp that he echoes. The moment freezes. The air goes still and even the stars stop their eternal glittering and tumbling. Cato feels like he knows this person, even though he can’t see them in the dark. They feel like a thunderstorm and he is caught under their torrent of rain and lightning.

Then, the world begins to turn again, and the person shoves themselves off Cato before he can do or say anything. They let out a stream of curses that would make the worst sort of airship pirate blush and then they stand. Cato unfreezes, fumbling in his pocket for the small torch he carries when he comes up to the roof.

Flicking it on he catches the back of a slender figure dressed in black moving away, but as Cato shines the torch, the figure pauses and looks back before disappearing into the shadows of the palace turrets.

Cato blinks after the intruder, still feeling drawn to their chaotic thunderstorm presence. He remains stupefied for another moment before he realizes the danger his father is most likely in. Midnight, leaping around rooftops dressed in all black points to only one thing: the intruder is an assassin. Cato lets out his own curse and scrambles down off the tiles, swinging through a window and lands back in his quarters.

Once inside, he wastes not a moment or breath and shouts for the guards, but they do not make it in time. The king is dead and sooner than Cato hoped, he is the now the next king. He does not feel ready and wonders if it was childish to wish to be a good King.  

Moment the Second

Their swords clash together and they parry back and forth from on top of their mounts, the second time Cato and Solveig meet. Around them, blood and dirt twines a tapestry with screams, groans and the grind of swords and shields.

The newly crowned king of Camalos faces off with the third princess of House Erembre, he doesn’t pay attention to her name in briefings and doesn’t care.

Compared to her two elder sisters there is little known about her as she has kept out of the public eye until now. Even since the death of her father, the late King of Vindia had led to the three sisters taking up the crown as a trio five years earlier.

This move made the rest of the Continent look in fear to the triple threat and vast reach that could be made with three equally ranked women at the head of the warmongering Kingdom of the north and the Continent had been right to fear. In the past five years, the Kingdom’s have seen more fighting than the days before the first Empress almost a thousand years ago.

“Isn’t this a surprise? The young King on the front lines. You’ve been hiding behind your guards and commanders for quite some time. Word is your a coward. You are nothing like your father. He who single-handedly defeated our champion Brevangr in a colosseum duel,” the princess says with a feral grin.

Her eyes are gold, and they flash with a wolfish hunger. She is a thunderstorm in battle, jabbing with words and steel. The verbal jab hits Cato right where he knows she intended it. Straight to his heart, and his head. He’s not his brash father, but he is of House Claris and there is enough verve and wit there to power a sun. He taps into that now, to give the illusion of confidence in his kingship.  

“I’m the same age as you,” Cato says, gripping his sword handle tighter and pushing forward with all his might, “I’ll do things in time.” He says this for his benefit as well as hers. Of all people, he finds it easy to speak with her, which gives him pause as he turns his mount to circle her on top her own.

But she isn’t affected by his words in the same he is hers and uses his pause to strike. He finds himself on the defensive for a moment. Cato may be taller than the princess, but her slender form hides a strength that pushes him back with the unpredictable grace of lightning. They strike and parry, Cato slices at the princess’s saddle and reins and she flips off before she can fall. The move is strangely light and flexible, for all that she wears layers of leather and metal for armour.

It is as if she’s tapping into the astral, as Cato does, to move faster and lighter, but everyone knows the Vindians hate astral users and regularly would cull any children exhibiting such sensitivity to the Voice of the universe. Cato has no such qualms making use of his astral abilities and follows the princess to the ground with a quick and light leap, he slaps his horses flank, sending the animal to run toward the Camalosian camp and away from the fray before turning his full focus on the princess. She has her sword up and for a barbaric Vindian, is showing civilized restraint in not attacking until Cato has his full attention upon her. He settles into a defensive stance as she circles him and speaks once more.  

“So soon after the fall of the great King Hal. I give you my condolences. It is amazing to see you dare step upon the battlefield,” she says, not missing a beat in her verbal jabbing despite being unseated.

“I give you my sword,” Cato dives forward, locking his sword with hers. He pushes, and she pushes back. Then he steps back and twirls away, causing the princess to stumble forward. In that moment Cato turns back swinging and knocks her sword out of her hands.

He watches as she screams like a thunder wolf, ducking and rolling before Cato can think to make a killing blow. Around them the battle continues in a cacophony of swords and bodies. Cato feels a pull toward her wild storm, as he stands, stance loose and sword only half at the ready, calculating her next move.

The princess has her sword now and is charging toward him. Cato comes back to life and dodges.

“Give up,” he says as they circle each other again.

“You need to give up first,” she snaps, slashing at him in a wild move. He ducks and spins.

“You’re doing this for the wrong reasons,” Cato insists. It is the truth. House Erembre of Vindia lost their king to an assassin five years ago in the middle of a banquet. Rumour says the king’s death wasn’t quick, and it was with his dying breath that his daughters vowed to avenge him.

“Oh, and you think killing my father was the right reason? All you southerners look down on us. Well, the tundra is stronger than you olex-oiled pinfeathers think.”

“I, nor my people did not kill your father,” Cato growls as the princess pushes toward him, causing him to dig his feet into the muddy ground.

“We are the fehr of the north, forged in fire and ice. We will not stop until you are all nothing but rain to feed our land.”

“Rain? Really? That’s different, but not at all scary,” Cato says relaxing his grip just enough to see if she’ll take the bait and slip under his defences. She does, and Cato is ready for her.

He flicks his sword up, but she is faster and twists to left. He sees her second weapon being pulled from a boot a second too late and it jabs into his side. He gasps and stumbles, his grip on his sword loosens.

“You will give your life for my people, Cloud King. Your blood will wet the throats of the north.”

Cato presses a hand to the wound in his side. One part of him knows he should be worried, he should be forcing himself to his feet and moving, but another part knows she’s not going to gut him right then and there. The moment feels frozen in time, sound seems distance and faded as he listens and watches her sword loosen in her own grip.

“You will come to us, begging for aid one day,” she says with a sneer and then Cato dives for her sword, pulling on a reserve of strength. He grasps the hilt, time begins to move all around him, and he throws it. He doesn’t know where the sword will go, just that as he taps into the astral, he sends with the sword the intention of it striking a mark.

The battle seems to restart around him. The princess screams. Cato looks to see where he threw her sword. The sword flies over the two armies like a falling star and strikes the eldest of the three princess’s of House Erembre who was still astride her horse.

“Sister!” The princess screams. The battle that day goes to Camalos, but King Cato of House Claris feels bereft as the two armies declare a temporary armistice.

Moment the Third

Three months later Solveig stands on her balcony in the Kingdom of Vindia, looking toward the south. It is midnight, and stars are falling from the sky. She finally has a moment alone after spending another long day going over reports from spies and fielding her furious second sister who wants the blood of Camalos’s king personally for his hand in their elder sister’s death. Watching the falling stars, Solveig wonders if it was a twisted sort of fate. After all, she had been the one to kill the previous King of Camalos.

“You!” A voice breaks her reverie. She pulls a dagger from her boot and turns to see the current King of Camalos standing on her balcony.

“You!” She says in the same tone, furious, confused and defensive all in one. His hand reaches to the side and suddenly he has a sword. She throws her dagger and he dodges.

“Why are you here?” He says, feet moving into a defensive stance.

“Why are you here?” She parrots back, “you’re the one who is standing on my balcony.”

“Balcony? You’re in my rooms!” He snaps, and then he strikes out, slashing at her. She dodges, and his sword hits the stone of the castle instead. He spins around, looking at her with a calculating eye.

“Did you do this? I had no idea the King of Camalos was a Druadin,” She says casually, ignoring his obvious intention to attack.

“I’m the King of Camalos,” the King of Camalos says with a prideful sniff.

“Oh right, you Camalosians are all cultish magic-users,” Solveig rolls her eyes and idly flips a dagger, thinking about what could have caused them to connect. Astral manipulation is unnatural, subversive to nature and to fair fights, for all the that Druadin flounce about with their lightning swords insisting they work for the order of nature and thus any of the battles Vindia starts in an effort to seek resources to feed their starving people. The King’s voice snaps her from her thoughts.

“Says the barbarian who wouldn’t know a fork was for eating food,” the King snaps, gripping his sword tighter. Solveig grins at how easily the man is baited into anger.

“So if you aren’t doing this who is,” she says, stepping forward, her daggers raised. Though he is an enemy, she is curious what he thinks since it’s becoming more obvious that whatever is happening is not his doing and she wants no part it in, regardless of the use of sorcery upon her.

In answer, the King raises his sword and only scowls. She shrugs which gains her another look of irritation from the King and then tosses a dagger at him. It slices through his chest, proving he wasn’t really there and then he disappears, fading out like the night against the sun.

Solveig puts the strange experience in the back of her mind. It is not the Vindian way to think too much or worry. Instead she visits her remaining sister and the two of them go down to the training yard. Soon they will be marching on Camalos once more.

Moment the Fourth

One month later Solveig and Cato meet on another battlefield. They stand across each other on a field that bisects the Camlosian and Vindian border, row upon row of soldiers behind them.  

“Will you not concede to our might?” Solveig speaks from her position on her mount.

“Your might, as you call it, is destroying homes and crops, so no,” the King of Camalos declares, also astride his own mount. He has brought three Druadin knights with him. They sit on their own mounts beside him, on their backs are the sheathed the great swords Solveig has heard are powered by lightning.

“Then, it seems we are at an impasse. Soldiers of Vindia!” Solveig raises her blackstone and fehr sword and then, the world is a blur of movement and sound as the two armies crash.

Solveig charges for one of the Druadin, a woman with hair dyed the same blue as their uniform. Solveig aims to get the Druadin out of the way so she can get to the King. She slashes out with her sword. It makes contact with the Druadin’s, that sends a shock wave of lightning and sparks in all directions.

She squints behind her helmet at the bright light, but the flashbang does not deter her. She can feel where the Druadin has shifted, and she strikes out with a wide swing, aiming for the haunch of the Druadin’s horse. The Druadin vaults off her mount with the same grace that Solveig has, and that she’d only seen in the King of Camalos. Not even Solveig’s sister can move with such fluidity as Solveig or this Druadin woman, who then slashes out with her stormsword even though it won’t hit anyone. What follows this time is a shock wave of sound.

Solveig’s mount panics, and she pulls at its reins as it bucks in response to the attack. She thinks of dawn, when everything is still and quiet, until the first trill of a bird. Her mount calms and Solveig leans forward, clear with what she has to so.

Kicking her mount forward she sheathes her sword and pulls a dagger from her sleeve with her free hand and slashes out. She strikes the Druadin knight in the arm wielding the stormsword. Solveig snatches the weapon as the woman’s grip falters. Then she wheels her horse around, strikes with the stormsword which crackles and sings like a thunderstorm in her grip. The knight goes down.

But her momentum is not finished yet. Solveig readjusts her grip on the stormsword and it seems to scream in her grasp, shaking and shuddering. Connecting with her but also pushing away from her. She gives no more than a breath to wondering at the seamlessness of her actions today.

She has always been the quickest of her sisters, the brightest, the fastest, the one who always wins despite her small stature and position as third sister. Second sister now, she spares a thought for Sifa and uses her rage and sadness to push her mount toward two more of the Druadin knights who have just downed one of her commanders. At the edge of her mind she can feel the King of Camalos, as if he’s at her back, waiting and watching, though she knows, logically, that he’s as deep in the blood of the battle as she is.

She charges toward the two Druadin knights with a howl to the sky, in honour of the star wolves. The stormsword is hot under her hand, but she strikes first with her daggers, tossing both toward the knights. She uses their surprise, as they focus on catching the projectiles to her advantage and strikes one with the stolen stormsword and then with a flick and twist, she strikes the other. She howls again, and their mounts shiver and buck, toppling the injured knights.

“To me! To me!” She calls, raising the stormsword, it crackles then, sending out sparks like it is lit with fire. She raises the Druadin’s stormsword high, to show not even the mystical knights can stand against the might of Vindia, the might of Solveig the Firehanded.

That is what they begin calling her when night falls and Vindian victory against the Camalosians is declared.

Moment the Fifth

Cato’s is in the middle of dressing after a bath that may have cleaned away the stench of battle, but did nothing to wash off the stench of defeat. He isn’t his father.

He is no hero, full of grand speeches. He’s of House Claris so he can strategize and scheme, but the charisma required when your army looses. When princess of the enemy who so scorn the Druadin, manages to down all three and use their sword in a sacrilegious storm of animalistic fury, he’s not prepared.

He likes his books and the stars. They make sense; they are logical, they can be contained and experienced from a distance. You are always outside of stories in books and no matter how much you wanted to; the stars are always too far to touch.

King Hal could unite the stars with his voice alone. Cato hasn’t found his voice yet, and what will mark him as a King, not just the next king. He’s more than grateful he has advisors who are guiding him through this process.

He doesn’t have them here, when the world slows and the princess appears. They both shout in alarm, Cato nearly tipping out of the bath and the princess goes red-faced, tumbling into the side of the tent. He smirks at the thought he can manage to do that to such a terrifying girl.

“Your Majesty?” One of the guards stationed outside his tent calls.

“I’m fine!” He shouts back, scowling at the princess who has righted herself and has her back to him.

“You’re in the bath!” She hisses, not turning around, “can you put something on?”

“Maybe don’t drop in without knocking!” He snaps back, reaching for a towel as he clumsily exists the barrel.

“Who has a bath on the battlefield?” She says with derision.

“Civilized people,” he says with a droll tone, knowing the second the words come out of his mouth she’s going to do something to him.

She turns around, wielding yet another dagger, despite sticking palace’s Druadin with two earlier that day. “I am grateful I am not civilized if it means I get to win the war.” Then her face goes bright red as she sees Cato standing there in only a towel. She scowls, waving her dagger at him, as she turns around.

“Get some cloths on! For a supposed civilized person you wear less than a rock lizard.”

“Rock lizards don’t wear clothes,” Cato says as he gathers up the sleepwear he’d been intending to put on. He’d had the bath to help clear his head, and then he was going to sleep.

Tomorrow will be full of endless talks over maps and figures. Tomorrow will be a sky’s worth of decisions regarding Camalos’s next step. They’d lost their Druadin, he isn’t sure if the Order willl send any more.

They are strapped and stretched, supporting the other Kingdoms who are struggling under other fronts from Vindia’s might. This princess and her army are just one of multiple armies the northern Kingdom has launched upon the Continent.

Then, Cato wonders if he could use whatever is happening between himself and this princess to his advantage. It’s something astral related, he knows that, by the feeling of time stopping and sound dimming, and the fact they can’t actually touch, as far he believes, based on their meeting on the princess’s balcony.

What he doesn’t know is why. He’d say the princess was astral-sensitive, but Vindians kill anyone with the ability, their princess surely would not be. He decides he’ll continue speaking with her, and see what he can gather to answer any of these unknowns.

“This was one battle in a war that’s been going on a long time,” he says, pulling on a pair of trousers. The war has. In fact, it started almost four generations ago and has been going on and off between Vindia, Camalos all the other Kingdoms on the Continent.

“And I am going to finish it. You’ll surrender to me. You will. You’re weak.”

“I am,” Cato shrugs as he pulls on a shirt. The princess still hasn’t turned around.

“So, Princess,” he says as he sits on the edge of his cot, “how are you going to defeat me? Just me. Not my army.”

She snorts, “You’re not much of King, do you know what your subjects say about you?”

“I can guess and I don’t care. I’m at the end of a long line of great figures of living memory and legends that go from seven hands tall to twenty, depending on the village you are visiting or how drunk the poet is.”

“We are our past. I am Solveig Erembre, the Firehanded, daughter of Reaga and Erlarok who have brought nine of the Twelve Kingdoms to their knees. I am an ancestor of Queen Briggan who took the Cloud Islands from the shrike with only a dagger. I am also the ancestor of King Ragna, who faced the Deep Wyverns and slew the Titans and so birthed the Bone Mountains. I was wrong. You aren’t weak, you are pitiful. I will crush you when we next meet.”

Cato listened to the princess’s impassioned speech, careful to keep any emotions off his face. He had an urge to say a number of things about the princess’s ancestors, but an internal tug held him back.

Whatever else he was, he was King and in that moment, he felt more sure of his position than ever. It had taken listening to someone else rattle off a list of ancestors as if they were great and wonderful figures for him to realize that his own were just that, figures. They were not in the here and now. They were the past.

“Why not right now? You probably want to say something biting about how I hid behind three Druadin today? Go ahead. I did, because I am King and there is only so much a King can do before the crown traps them in the same cage made of stanzas and rhymes that have trapped all of that past you insist upon.”

“Because…” the princess stuttered, bit her lip and scowled at Cato. “You’re an embarrassment to your ancestors.”

“Are you going to find six more ways to say the same thing or can we agree, that we both agree upon that point and move on. How are you going to defeat me?”

The princess just growled and waved her dagger at him. Cato raised an eyebrow.

“In civilized places we don’t wave naked blades about until we intend on using them. Are you going to kill me now?”

“You know I can’t. My dagger will just go through you.”

“Will it? All the best knowledge is only gained with practice. Strike me down,” Cato says, curious to see what might happen both in the princess’s choices and in whatever the astral is doing to drop them in the same space.

He leans forward and catching the princess in the eye. Her gold eyes were bright and angry, confused and conflicted. He marvels at the many emotions running through her eyes, even as he feels a deep, centred peace himself. Like standing under a tree during a thunderstorm.

For the first time he feels like he is just Cato, and that he knows who Cato is. Cato stands underneath a thunderstorm and funnels its power to bring life back to earth. It’s an odd feeling after wishing so long to be confident.

He feels his burrow furrow and the expression of emotion sets the princess back to what Cato privately considers her default setting, that of anger. With a huff she pulls an arm back and throws, but as her hand releases the dagger, the world freezes and the princess disappears, along with the dagger.

Cato lets out a breath and flops back on his cot wondering if anyone, ancestral or otherwise has ever had to deal with such a singularly difficult individual.

They were enemies for sky’s sake!

Moment the Sixth

The sixth time Solveig and Cato meet is the next morning when Cato sneaks into the Vindian camp alone. He uses a good helping of astral-cloaking and a few practical disguises too.

This doesn’t stop him from having a dagger thrown at his face, and as he shifts away from its twanging handle, a few of his black hairs tumble to the ground. He looks at Solveig with a raised brow, one raised hand and a finger on his lips.

“King Cato,” she says with great derision laced through her tone, but she hasn’t shouted for guards or gone to attack him again. He takes this as a temporary win.

“I have a proposition,” he says, not one to waste words on politeness where it is neither wanted nor needed.

“Why should I listen?” She says, flipping another dagger in her hand. A show of her ability, but Cato isn’t fooled. For once the princess seems willing to listen.

“You already are,” he says, “you are listening. I am here to ask one thing of you, in the name of the people who have both lost,” he pauses, his thoughts going to his father and the assassin that night who had tripped over him.

He wonders now, looking at Solveig, if she had been the assassin, but he doesn’t do more than give the thought a fleeting glance. Staying in the past is helping neither of them. Solveig, on the other hand, grows visibly tense and her face contorts into a sneer.

“Oh, so you are going to be the civilized one? Giving me your hand in some play of peace. To show off even more how barbaric we are. How cruel and full of bloodlust Vindia is?”

“No, I am not giving you my hand. I do not give gifts to enemies; however, I do give enemies a choice.”

“What right do you have to give me a choice? Your army is decimated and you’re prancing about as righteous and clean as ever. You are not,” she snaps, pointing her dagger at Cato. He sighs. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

It’s the princess after all and ever since she tripped into his life, it has been anything but. She is an enemy, but she has a face, she has fears, she has opinions and he knows, somewhere under all that anger, she has dreams too.

“What are you going to do, when you defeat me?” He says, curious. He keeps his stance open and relaxed but watches the princess’s moves carefully. She is like a sun snake, small and seemingly harmless until cornered and threatened.

She flips the dagger again, a nervous habit Cato realizes. Then, finally, on the other side of the glowing embers of the fire dome set in the brazier of her tent, she says, “I want to win.”

“Why?” Cato says, pushing. She scowls, and the dagger spins between her fingers, faster and faster until it is a blur.

“I want to win,” she says. Her voice is thick with emotion, but her eyes glint with something else. A flash of vulnerability and anger that Cato is pulling it out of her this way.

“Okay,” he says and then he kneels before her, “then hereby let it be known that I, King Cato Augura of House Claris, formally yield and requests for an audience on the morrow to draw conditions of our surrender.”

When he looks up the princess gapes at him, the hand holding the dagger dangles loose at her side. “But, you wanted…you…I…I am going to kill you one day, Cato. One day, you will die by my hands.”

Cato struggles to keep a grin off his face at the princess’s use of his personal name. There is what he gambled for the last time they met, the possibility that she might be as bereft and lost in her titles and position as he had felt. His gamble is paying off.

He stands up and returns to a loose stance, keeping his hands in front. He regards the princess in all her confusion and feels peace once more. They are enemies, they have opposite opinions and perspectives and differing cultures, but whatever happens, he’ll go down in history as a King.

“Okay,” he says, “but can we hold off my death at least until all the armies are sent home and my people are well-cared for?”

“You are weak,” Solveig says, but for the first when she says this, it is said with a tinge of envy.

“Most definitely,” Cato says, “but we Camalosians spend our days eating grapes, cheeses and talking to trees.”

Solveig wrinkles her nose at the last bit, “do you Druadin actually talk to trees?”

“I’m not a Druadin,” Cato corrects, “I’m a King, and yes we do. Does it sound uncivilized and barbaric to you?”

Solveig scowls as he tosses her words back at her and Cato adds, “you know, if you took a moment to reflect. You’d realize I never did call you barbaric. What I will call you is clumsy, for all that you’ve got unnatural grace on the battlefield. You need to learn how to run our rooftops better.”

Her eyes widen, “You, you…”

“Thank you. I did wonder if that had been you. As I said when I entered, we have both done damage to each other. Will you let the past go and walk forward into something new instead?”

He sticks out his hand this time. Solveig looks at it with a raised brow, “I thought you said you didn’t give your hand to enemies.”

“I said I give my enemies a choice. This is a choice, Solveig,” he gives her name emphasis and pauses. “What will you chose?”

She stares at the hand, and then looks at Cato, catching his eyes. “I accept your surrender, King Cato of Camalos. Please excuse me, I have much I must discuss with my generals.”

Cato bows, one royal to another and then darts out the way he came feeling elated and also, a flash of disappointment as ghosts of “what if,” dance through his head until he’s back in his camp, calling in his generals and setting up strategies and baselines for all that is yet to come.

He may have brokered a peace, bringing a possible end to this eternal war, but the road to true peace would be a battle fought with a different set of weapons and friendships took more than just a few meetings on a battlefield, even if one of the friends acted like a wild, thunder wolf.

Moment the Seventh

One year later, Solveig is once again at the Camalosian palace, but this time she is stepping out of her skiff, being greeted by guards and guided through the front doors. Around her there is a feeling of elation and joy. There is a flash and crackle of sparklights going off somewhere and she’s sure the palace will have their own show at some point tonight. She’s learned a lot about Camalos in the past year, and their greatest feature is their love of gatherings, of celebrating anything and today marks the end of the hundreds of years of war across the Continent.

Today she and Cato signed, along with the Kings and Queens of Twelve Kingdoms, an agreement of peace and unity. The start of a new, centralized, elected Empire that would keep any Kingdom from falling to the desperation that the droughts and famines and power-struggles had pushed Vindia too again and again.

Tonight, they celebrate.

As she steps into the palace, she sees Cato standing at the top of a dais in the main hall. He smiles at her from the distance, says something to the dignitaries he is speaking with and walks down toward Solveig, to greet her personally. There are whispers and eyes following him through the room.

“Princess Solveig. It is a pleasure to have you join us this evening,” he smiles like a King but his eyes twinkle, like he’s got a secret he wants to tell. She glares at him, but flashes her newly practiced, civilized princess’s smile.

She is Vindia’s representative while her remaining sister stays back home, keeping the country running. A few more pleasantries are exchanged and Solveig greets and is greeted by others at the ball. There is a grand feast, a dance and a bombastic show of sparklights. Solveig revels in it all, but as the bells ring the midnight hour, she finds herself slipping off to a balcony, looking out over the capital city. There is a tall building just beyond the palace walls, lit between white pillars by crystal lamps. She remembers the building from almost two years ago now. The building she had tripped over someone on her way to assassinate the old King.

“That used to be my favourite place. I haven’t gone there since that day,” Cato says.

“Why not?” Solveig turns seeing the King of Camalos step up beside her. His gaze is fixed on the building in the distance.

“We used to spend the evenings playing taflfleet, but I’d stopped out of a silly sense of rebellion after he started filling my days with lessons to prepare me for kingship. I used to sneak up to that rooftop and spend hours there hiding from him and various tutors. I assumed he’d be around for many years yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Solveig says, looking toward the building with a new light. She says it for what she did and for what he felt. For all the things in the past.

Cato shrugs, “if we’re doing apologies. I’m sorry too. Would you like to go there with me?”

Solveig blinks at the question, disconcerted for a moment. Her fingers itch for a dagger, but she’d conceded against wearing them openly. They were meant to be in peacetime.

“Don’t stab me with your daggers, come on. Let’s go,” he gestures with one hand.

“Now?” She asks, feeling a little stupid.

“Yes, now. This is the best time to see them.”

Cato starts walking toward a staircase in a small alcove.

“See what?” Solveig asks, as they climb the staircase, up and up and up.

“The falling stars of course,” he says, and that’s the last either of them speak as Cato guides Solveig down a hall, to a window, out which they climb and then carefully walk across the rooftop. She pulls up her long dress- coat and ties it around her waist. Cato’s pulled off his jacket and has it slung over one shoulder. After a careful leap between the palace wall and down to the lower rooftop of the building, they are there.

“Look up,” Cato says as he settles onto the roof, leaning back on his hands, looking nothing like a king in that moment, just a dreamer.

Solveig settles beside him and looks up. Stars are streaking across the sky in a light show that isn’t flashy like sparklights or grand like the aurora that dances over the skies in the countryside of Vindia. They are simple, small, quick, and creating their own singular threads across the night sky.

“One day I want to visit the stars. I want to go where no one else has gone yet. I want to go into the future. Care to join me?” Cato says, and he sits up then and holds out his hand, palm up to Solveig. She looks up at the stars, tracking one as it falls over the dark shapes of the mountains, only visible because of the bright moon and the light of the comets.

The future is unknown, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. She doesn’t need things from the past to fill her every moment if she has dreams to look forward to. She takes his hand as two stars fall, twining their tails together.

Author’s Notes

There will be more to come with these two at some point. I had a lot of fun exploring their building friendship through just a series of interconnected moments and time skips.

Check out other tales in the Lighthouse Stories collection: here

Check out my new podcast series Inn of Stormy Nights uploading a new episode every week on YouTube: here