Episode 14 Stars Above
Stars Above
Cerian follows silently as Arisanna leads him through a series of back passageways and stairwells to avoid being seen.
At the base of what appears to be a stone tower with stairs circling upward for several stories, she pulls him through a doorway and shuts and bars the door. “There. Now no one will disturb us. Hopefully, everyone is still at the banquet, anyway.”
At least they won’t have to explain their presence to anyone. Or her appearance. He caught sight of his clothes hanging on her slender frame when her cloak parted as she turned, and he barely held back a smile at how big they were on her.
When she asked to borrow his things, images of her using and touching everything he owns sent a wave of panic rushing through him, but he swallowed it.
She’s his binding partner now. His wife, as the humans say. He’s going to have to deal with...sharing.
Though getting her clothes of her own will be high on his list of priorities once they reach Celesta.
Thoughts of her in her elven huntress dress flash before his eyes, and he almost trips on the stairs.
“Are you all right?” she asks over her shoulder.
“I’m fine. How far is it?”
“Not too much farther.”
They continue circling ever higher, and Cerian feels her heart speeding up at the exertion. This level of activity shouldn’t have much of an effect on him, so it must be her.
“Do you need to rest?” he asks.
Her words come out on heavy breaths, but she shakes her head. “We’re almost there.”
Soon, they pass through a wooden platform into a small room housing what must be a telescope. He’s heard of such things, even that they had one at the castle, but he’s never seen one himself.
“Here we are.” She sets the lamp on a table at the side of the room and smiles at him before reaching for the blankets. “Let me take those.”
Cerian eyes the telescope uncertainly as she places the mound of blankets on another table, and then he looks at the ceiling. “How does it work?”
“We have to open the roof.” She tugs at a metal hand crank on the wall and frowns. “I might need your help. I rarely come up here alone.”
Cerian easily turns the lever, and the roof above them parts. How do they keep the rain from seeping through the crack in the opening? Some clever interlocking design, perhaps?
Arisanna steps toward the telescope and presses her eye to a small hole at the lower end. “Oh, good, you can see something. Here, look.”
She moves to the side, and he takes her place. A bright star fills his vision in far greater detail than even a naked elven eye could see. It’s incredible.
“I think it’s pointing at the dragon constellation,” Arisanna says as she squints at the sky above them.
Cerian looks up, trying to get his own bearings in the early night sky.
“We call it Zelovon. The first fire wielder. He was an air wielder, too, and so adept at magic that he could carry himself on the wind for miles, raining fire down on his enemies. My father is an air and fire wielder like Zelovon. He can fly, too, though he doesn’t do it often. ”
When Cerian glances back at Arisanna, her eyes are wide.
That’s probably the longest string of words he’s said to her since he arrived. He clears his throat and gazes through the telescope again.
“Tell me more about your magic?” she says quietly.
He exhales slowly. Today, he promised her many things. Sharing his life with her being one of them. He can’t hold her at arm’s length. Especially not with the heartbinding.
“I have dual affinities for fire and plant magic,” he says.
“Is that why you like the forest? Because of your plant magic?”
He glances at her and nods. “That’s part of it. My magic is most comfortable when surrounded by that which responds to it. It’s...soothing.”
“That’s why you throw fireballs?”
He looks away again. “Yes.”
Curious, Cerian adjusts the telescope slightly to see if he can spot the rings of Tanimos, the easiest planet to find in the night sky. It should be overhead now if his memory serves.
Suddenly, everything blurs, and he can’t make out anything.
He didn’t break it, did he?
“Is it blurry?” Arisanna asks. “I think if you turn some of those knobs, that should fix it. You’ll have to play around with everything to figure it out. I spent more time learning elven history than astronomy, I’m afraid.”
“You learned elven history?”
She nods. “I even learned something of Zelovon, though my tutors never told me he could fly. If I’m not mistaken, you’re descended from him, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Cerian hesitantly turns one of the knobs, but that just makes it worse. Perhaps the other way. If only she weren’t standing there watching him fumble with it.
After a few more tries, he manages to bring everything back into focus.
“Take your time,” she says. “We can stay here all night if you want. Unless you were planning to...” Her voice trails off, and he stills.
Perhaps they should talk about this instead of dancing awkwardly around it forever.
“I think we should wait.” He barely forces the words out.
Whistling wind, why was that so hard? Not that this isn’t an awkward topic to discuss.
“Wait? To...to...”
“Yes.”
“All right.” She sounds relieved. Did she really think he was planning to force himself on her tonight? Or any night?
Yet another awkward silence ensues, but Cerian makes no effort to fill it as he fiddles with the telescope. Arisanna seems content to let him entertain himself.
“There it is,” he says after quite a few minutes have passed. It’s spectacular. He can actually see the color striations of the rings. “Here, look.” He steps away so Arisanna can take his place.
“Is that Arturan? That’s not what you call it, though. The ringed planet.”
“We call it Tanimos.”
“Tanimos. It’s beautiful.” She steps back and smiles up at him as the light from the lamp casts shadows around them, bringing out the reddish tint in her hair.
She really is beautiful. Even if her ears are so oddly shaped.
So are Viala’s, and Cerian has caught his brother affectionately running his fingers over the rounded edges of Viala’s ears more than once.
Will Cerian ever do the same to Arisanna? It’s hard to imagine. Are human ears even as sensitive as elven ears? The thought of Arisanna brushing his ears with her delicate fingers leaves him flustered, and he quickly ducks toward the telescope again.
It really is amazing. To have a simple device like this always at your disposal to view the heavens—what would that be like?
Eventually, he steps away from the telescope and turns to Arisanna. “Thank you for bringing me here. I wish we had such things in Celesta.”
“You seem to know the night sky well despite the poor view from your home.”
“Yes. I...climb the trees to see the stars.”
“You climb...” Her eyes grow large. “Do you ever fall?”
“Not for a long time. And the trees would catch me if I asked them to.”
“Plant magic. Right. Well, that’s a relief.”
She sounds genuinely concerned for his safety. Of course, if he dies, so does she.
It didn’t sound like self-interest, though. Does she feel the draw of the heartbinding already?
“Would you like to go outside now?” She gestures to a wooden door on the other side of the telescope.
“What’s outside?”
“An observation deck. We could look at the stars more. If you want to.”
“I’d like that.” Cerian helps her close the roof before following her through the door. She carries the blankets against her chest, though she left the lantern behind.
He should have told her some fire wielders can create pure light with their magic. No need to risk burning anything down with an errant flame. It’s been years since he accidentally caught anything on fire.
Thoughts of fire and light abandon him at the scene awaiting him once he steps through the door. Rising high above the castle and the capital city of Nunia, the observation deck of the astronomy tower offers breathtaking views for miles in every direction. At least it would in the daylight.
But at night? It feels as if he could stretch his hand out and tickle a star. It’s their own private view of the heavens’ dance across the inky darkness far above the gas lamps dotting the streets of Levina.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Arisanna asks.
“Amazing doesn’t do this justice,” he breathes.
“Here.” She hands him a blanket to ward off the chill of the early autumn night, and he wraps it around himself as he gets lost in the view of the stars above them.
He barely registers her laying a second blanket on the wooden platform at their feet.
“To do this properly, we need to lie down,” she says.
That gets his attention. “Lie down?”
“To look up.”
Right. He looks at the blanket she laid, and as he watches, she layers another one on top of it.
“That should keep the chill from the platform away,” she says.
It never occurred to him that stargazing would involve lying down together on a raised platform high above the city.
He looks back at the starry sky. It would be easier to see if he were to lie down.
“You don’t have to,” she says. “I used to come up here with my father before his knees kept him from climbing so many stairs, and we always lay on blankets like this. I just assumed...”
Her story touches his heart as thoughts of his own mother fill his mind. She’d love it up here. Perhaps if his parents visit again, Mother will be able to climb the stairs herself.
“Well. This was a bad idea,” Arisanna mumbles when he doesn’t respond. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“All right.”
She looks up at him. “All right?”
Rather than respond, he lowers himself to the blanket beside her, and soon, they’re lying side by side, staring up at the lights dotting the ebony sky.