Epilogue Double Star
Epilogue
Double Star
Deep in the mountains of the Lost Range, in a small village on the tallest peak, a young girl was listening to a bedtime story. It was a story she had heard many times before, and yet when her father tucked her in, it was always the tale of the double star that the girl wished to hear.
“There is a double star that can only be viewed from Reverie on the clearest of nights,” her father began. “Normally, the two stars are so close together that they appear as a single point of light, but when the sky is cloudless and the moon is new, both stars are visible.”
“I want to see them!” the girl exclaimed.
“Then I will show you one day,” her father said. “The fifth Starmaker had always thought it romantic: two stars gravitationally bound together, held in each other’s orbit.”
“Aurora?” the girl asked, her voice full of wonder.
“That’s right. When you’re older, we can read everything she published during her reign.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. Shall I continue with the story?”
The girl nodded eagerly, and her father smiled. “The world is full of love stories, from the Earth to the sky and beyond, each one different from the last, each one beautiful. The fourth and fifth Starmakers had one such story.”
The girl tugged her blanket closer to her chin, her eyes lighting up the way they always did when her father told this story.
“They came to be known as the Double Star, a name that the fourth Starmaker scorned and the fifth Starmaker adored. They fell in love with each other so deeply that they could not bear to be parted, the Sun changing the very rules of the mountain so that one’s beginning was not the other’s end.”
The girl’s father recounted their remarkable reign, speaking of the record warmth and minimal Frost, the new species of roses they had created.
He told of their devotion to the mountain and to each other, and as he did, the girl’s eyes remained wide open, not a hint of sleepiness making her eyelids heavy.
“When their reign was over, they were buried together, their magic feeding the mountain they had given not only their lives to, but also their deaths. And though we can never be certain what awaits us in the endless after, Aurora herself wrote that she believed they would find rest.
“Many stories just like this one tell of their love and affection, their fierce passion and their undying loyalty. Sonnets and poems proclaim how fortunate Reverie is to have had them, how they have always belonged to the mountain.
“But while we are indeed fortunate to have had them for a time, the fourth and fifth Starmakers—the Double Star—did not belong to the mountain. They belonged to each other, and Reverie simply borrowed them.”
A small tear rolled down the girl’s cheek, and her father wiped it away. “The end,” he said, kissing his daughter on the forehead before softly closing her door.
The girl fell into a deep sleep, and as she slept, the story wove its way into her mind, its roots growing deeper and deeper until it had become a part of her. Only time would tell what it would bloom into, but as was the way with stories, it could be anything.
Perhaps, then, the end was not an end at all, but rather, a beginning.