Stardust in Your Veins
Revenir Short Story | A dying seer's final gift
Hello and welcome to the Fiction Section of Notes from the Town Hermit. Like in my main publication, these stories centre on themes of identity and what it means to be human. Main genres are literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy written with a lyrical and poetic writing style. Subscribe for free to enjoy more stories.
You are reading a standalone story from Revenir, an anthology I co-wrote with my son who died in 2021. The stories explore the human experience and delve deep into themes of love, loss, and the search for meaning. Written in a haunting, lyrical style and set in a single fantasy world, this collection is for readers looking for character-driven stories with strong emotional resonance.
The stars spoke to me. They trickled along the universe all over our skies, stretching over us, telling me stories of what was, what is, and what always would be. It was strange how the pattern imprinted upon this dark canvas imitated the patterns in my head so much that I understood what they told us. And I understood? Of all that were present, I understood?
Their dusty glitter trail formed fortunes and predictions into the sky, a sky only I could read, that I was cursed to read. Every generation needed a seer to interpret the stars.
The stars spoke to me. They told me how each possibility would end, and they were always right.
That’s why when they whispered to me that one night, when the cool air drifted through the castle chasing the heat away, and the lit torches threatened to flicker out from the force of it, and the stars said I would not make it, I believed them.
They hummed and cast their glow upon our kingdom as though vouching for us. Telling creation that it was our stories up there, not theirs. Not anyone heavenly or hellish whose greatness was etched upon existence; it was ours, and I thought our stories could never go wrong. How could they? The stars vouched for us.
The light was on our side. How could anything ever go wrong?
And so I’d walk along the castle's corridors beneath the night sky, my bare feet silent on cold stone. I would gaze upon all the fortunate occupants, all the fortunate beings coming and going, including those who resided in town and those who journeyed to visit, and I would reflect on the sheer beauty of having the light behind every story, every life, every soul. A star for each life.
If only they would stay like that.
Sometimes, sometimes I stayed hidden away in the basements to avoid a glimpse of the night, entertaining my sister, Aruna, when sleep evaded her, and falling asleep together in one of many rooms.
The avoidance, though, the avoidance pulled at my navel to drag me out and look.
Read.
And I would. I would read of possibilities, and pain, and happiness, and the collage of all futures that looked so stunning in their tragic or victorious filters. It would make me cry—cry at what loss each brought, and cry from gratitude regardless of the anguish.
And so I searched those days for the successor to our kingdom of Seren, trying to make out hints of who he might become in every future. For I was on my way to the moon, where the elders would bestow upon me the freedom of whatever I desired in death. I had only five moons remaining, and every day, my strength dwindled further.
Sometimes, foolishly, I would look for futures where I might make it, even as they named the disease that flowed through my veins. Still, I searched in desperation.
What of Aruna? I’d plead. What of Aruna, whose blood I shared; who would show her the magnificence she holds? The gift to one day be an elder on the moon.
When all my searching bore no fruit, I rested my head against the castle’s cobblestoned exterior, before heading inside with a gnawing inside me, festering just as the disease did. I envisioned myself on the moon soon, and I’d have to leave Aruna behind.
Aruna would say I smelled funny. “Ahsa, you smell like wet dirt.” She looked amused, hiding the churning in her stomach.
“I thought you liked the scent of dirt when it rained,” I said with some agitation. “Why is that funny? I thought I was pleasing you.”
“Because the dirt doesn't smell like Seren. It's white, like the moon,” she said, biting her lip.
“And how would you know what moon dirt smells like?” I asked, hiding the gnawing tickling growing in my chest.
“Because you usually smell like stardust runs through your veins, and the opposite can only be moon dirt.” Her voice was concerned, yet with the naivety of a child still learning the mathematics.
“Maybe one day I’ll be on the moon, and the stardust is turning to adjust for it,” I told her before excusing myself to the skies for another desperate search.
When I thought of the stardust Aruna spoke of, it made me feel helpless. What is stardust, if not a tool to predict with? Maybe I was only meant to serve that purpose and nothing more.
And so with my remaining days, I made it known the disease had wound its way around my lungs to the court, and no medicine from all the seven seas could stop that.
“Surely not,” the nobles cried. “The stars would not have lifted you to the place of Seren’s seer for so brief a time.”
So brief. So brief.
The words echoed in the courtroom and clattered around my ribs as I wheezed. Did I not think this, too?
I spent my days bedridden with ink and parchment, writing down as many of the best possibilities I considered would help Seren and its people live well. Even as my hands faltered and weakened, I scribbled my words onto the pages in desperation to leave behind—what?—a legacy? I’d not been blessed to see enough summers—a fragment of a life ended before it could begin. But this I would leave for my people and my sister. My body slumped over the stacks of possible futures I had read in the skies—futures I would never see—and my tears mingled with the ink as I wrote small letters for Aruna in between its pages.
I stitched up the parchments and bound the spine, a leather cover to protect it. And I named it the future of stars.
As my breaths shortened toward the very last days, and my fingertips tinted blue, Aruna spent her time beside me.
I’d comb my fingers through her hair and call her the future, because the future was no longer me.
When she asked if I’d gift her my name before I left, I told her to forget me, for even though she was the future of Seren, she was still the star burning bright as the sun first, and so it wouldn't matter by what name she was called.
“Why does stardust run through my veins?” I asked her, because even then, the light of a future elder shone through her as if she was a gateway, and her words fell like the stars only in the vaguest of ways.
A seer could only read the infinite and try. An elder, or elder to be, held much more.
“Because the future runs within you. Because we’ll lose a star when you make your way towards the moon. The adjustments you spoke of will shed away and the stardust will be stronger than ever without the constraint of Seren’s limitations,” she said with her hand clasped upon mine, while the raspy congestions making vibrations through my chest reverberated through her, promising only fading life.
“When you go, I’ll look after Seren. You don't have to worry,” she’d say. “You should be free at last. No more crying because of the night.”
And sometimes when she thought I was asleep, when I was just too exhausted to keep my eyes open, lips blue and skin cold, she’d shed tears, and I’d want to go back to search for life in the stars, search for a different ending.
She wept and they dripped onto my fingers. She reached with shaking hands to wipe them away and bring the hand close to her and sobbing. As if she had the power to cry life into me, cry stardust into my veins.
And when she’d fall asleep crying, I’d take gasping, silent, long breaths because it hurt to cry, and lift heavy hands to wipe the tears from her face. I’d stroke her hair and bring her hand close to my lips and kiss it.
My eyes would search for the window and find the moon, following the emanating glow from it, and plead, “Don’t you care? Aruna needs me. She needs me. Don’t you care?”
And I’d try not to move my sore muscles too much. I’d turn back to her and get up. Shaking from the nonexistent cold nestled within my bones, I’d shift her into a comfortable position.
“I’ll shine over you with the light of the moon and in each white cloud in the sky,” I whispered.
I’d put the future of stars on her lap, cloaking a blanket over her and moving towards the window.
I’d search in the skies, hands gripped on the high window’s base supporting my weak, breathless form, searching yet again, sifting through the same stories, needing the sky to stop the suffocation my end held.
Was I not worthy of having my story etched into the star’s magnificence? Was I really so wicked?
And as shooting stars would fall on that thought, I’d see my story fall and die. Eyes trained on my end, spirit already struggling from me to go, receive my blessing from the elders on the moon.
I’d wheeze, trying to catch air and hope not to wake Aruna, mourning her before she mourned me. My last thoughts a prayer to the stars to keep her safe, to keep my little sister from having her story snatched before her time.
When my time comes, I shall watch her from my place on the moon, for my heart could not bear to leave her alone to carry a seer’s burdens alone. And she would know my presence when she looked above and saw the brightest light in the sky.
