The Halcyon Girl

In an age long forgotten, there hung a castle in the sky, suspended by stars. The palace used to be a beacon of hope, little more than a concept to bring to the world ideals, to give the world order and to show men honor when they looked to the skies. This palace was secured to the clouds by thirty strings, delicate as spiderweb, but hundreds of times as strong. Those gifted with the powers of darkness were chosen to watch over half of these strings, and those with light the other half, to keep the castle in the sky and preserve this shred of hope that the world could eventually become perfect. 

Anciently, these two factions did not trust each other. Half stars reborn, half monsters given a second chance (so the legends said), one faction wished to control the others, though even they themselves never gave this desire a name, instead calling it suspicion or mistrust due to the nature of the darklings. Those who held the night in their hands were rarely powerful enough to fight back, instead retreating into mountains or fighting wars of ideas. These wars were ongoing, even at the time that these thirty guardians were chosen and given their wings, the better to protect and thicken their strings. 

Each string was bonded to the heart of the guardian. As they sought to become better, and in turn to better their worlds through the ideals of the stars, the strings would strengthen. This, the spirits decided, was a perfect way. Surely those respected with such a sacred duty would never forget what they stood for. After all, half of them came from the stars, and the other half had in a previous life been pure enough to wish to change their very nature. Their task was the perfect way to do it. How could they not appreciate that? 

This worked perfectly for exactly ten years. On the anniversary of the day the system had been implemented, a lightling called Elisa sought out the spirits and presented an argument. Creatures of darkness, she claimed, should not be trusted with such a task. Their very abilities marked them as evil by nature, something difficult to overcome even for the best of their kind. The spirits listened patiently but painfully as she listed the reasons she saw her people as deserving of the birthright, and the darklings as little more than peasants. Redeemed prisoners. As she spoke, her string began to melt, little by little, drop by drop. Gradually, the sustaining energy of the stars withdrew from the darkness she’d found in her heart. 

She paused for breath, and the string snapped. 

The spirits shuffled and muttered. There was more than one cry of despair. What went wrong, they asked each other? Where did she go wrong? What happened? 

They forgot about Elisa, who, feeling the loss, flew to see her string. It had snapped, having become far thinner than it should have been. Aghast, she tried to fix it. “I was only doing what was right,” she cried to the stars. “You have chosen my people! You have given us your gifts, not the darklings. Have you forgotten that you favor us?” 

She should not have spoken. Her wings, bestowed also of the stars, began to melt away. The stars did not wish her death, but they could not stop it. Her ideas were flawed. They were wrong, and they could not give their power unto one who had allowed her mind to become clouded with the ideas of men. If only she had understood. But, for Elisa, it was too late. 

The spirits called the other 29 together, determined to find out what went wrong. They told the others what had happened to Elisa, and asked how they could prevent this in the future. Haedin, a darkling, stepped forward. “We need to realize, he said, that my people is just as good as their people, chosen of the stars or not.” 

“But you are not chosen,” Tembri insisted, a lightling. “You are not chosen because you are not good enough. You are monsters. You must beg on your knees for a chance at redemption. We are fallen gods, here only to gather more power. Naturally, we are the more capable.” 

“And Elisa? She was among the capable?” 

“Elisa was a fool,” Tembri snapped. “She grew weak. The ideals state that our groups are equal and deserve our opportunities. Those are, however, ideals. Only rusty ideals. Her crime is speaking a truth that contradicts what the stars would have us believe.”

Haedin stiffened while Tembri went on. 

“The stars are weak,” he said. “They are too merciful to those who don’t deserve it.”

Tembri’s string snapped. “He stumbled back, shocked. What did you do, Haedin?”

Haedin’s eyes flashed with anger. “I did nothing, you fool. You did it yourself. You called the stars weak. You contradicted the ideals. The truth.”

From there, the conference only escalated, and the influence of the spirits was not enough to calm thirty fiery angels. Some were angry because they were set equal with darklings. Darklings, they claimed, had no moral code. Darklings were monsters reborn. Darklings were abominations. They should all be killed. These arguments only escalated, and several darklings threw in retorts of their own. Lightlings were useless little pieces of divinity who had never done anything wrong in their lives, as if the darkling blood on their hands was nothing but mud from mere interactions with them. Lightlings destroyed everything they touched. Lightlings, full of privilege, full of superiority, made them sick. Lightlings were the ones that should be expunged. 

Snap. Snap. Snap. 

But nobody seemed to care anymore. Now it was about winning. Winning, whether the castle crashed or not. Strings melted and snapped. Wings dripped onto the floor, coating it in a thin layer of wax. Most of the darklings stayed out of the confrontation, watching the proceedings with wide eyes, trying to calm everybody. But their strings alone were not enough. The castle creaked, tilted, stretched the remaining strings thin…

…thin enough to snap. 

The palace, symbol of ideals, fell. The spirits escaped. The twenty nine were not so lucky. The impact with the mountaintop killed most of them instantly, even the few who hadn’t noticed over their own shouting, not until the palace had flipped and crashed into the ground. 

The towers were not crushed. The palace was built in the shape of a smooth trident, and the spires stabbed into the ground, fixing the palace and the island beneath it deep into the earth. 

For years, people within eyeshot and earshot of the mountain where it fell spoke stories in hushed, nervous voices of the huge landmass that had fallen there. They knew nothing of the palace. It was no longer visible. 

A relic. 

A relic of ideals and broken promises. 

A relic of the past, of an angry people turned fiery and the passive not strong enough to hold up the world.

Ideals had fallen. Ideals had broken. And yet the stars had hope. 

Perfection, after all, is not for man. These people had listened too much to the skeptics. In magnanimously descending to work with the others, they showed the world how good they could really be. But only out of pride. 

This was not the way to return to the stars. This was the way to return to what they were before, back to waiting and learning until they were ready to try again. 

The stars and the spirits spoke of the events. They found the inferrations made by these two nations quite interesting. Why would they send remorseful monsters to the earth with darkness when that was the very thing they were attempting to forsake? Why would they send stars, who already knew how to use light, to earth as lightlings? There was no progression there. No, the monsters were the lightlings, given light to learn to use it so they could come to the skies. The stars were sent with darkness, to learn to harness it so they could become something more. Light and dark together. That was progression. 

No, the conquerors had been wrong. 

No, the victims had been wrong. 

Perhaps, with the truth, they would be able to find their ideals. 

Then again, maybe truth, like ideals, would famously thud to the earth, the minders of it disillusioned and annoyed. 

—KLH