The following is (the better part of) the prologue to a fantasy novel I am currently writing, also entitled Season of Awakening.

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The next morning started slowly, especially since Stefan didn’t wake until well after the sun was up. Despite everything that had already happened, he had still harboured a hope that he might be able to rise earlier than his host, get his hands on the kind of small boat that one who lived on an island must surely have, and make his way to somewhere near a route used by the Imperial convoys or merchants from one of the Seven Sisters. There were things about his visit to Singaraja he hadn’t been able to tell her – couldn’t tell her, and it would have been better to leave before the questions turned in that direction, because of the risk to him and because of the risk to her. As eccentric as she was and as unusual as her living arrangements might be, it seemed clear that she was just a civilian, and it would have been the best way for him to show gratitude for all she had done.

But when he opened the curtains, he found that it was mid-morning, and the cool autumn sunlight dazzled him for a moment. He craned his neck, taking in the view. Morgan’s garden was unfenced, and the edges blended into the surrounding landscape, relatively seamless except for the longer grass and wild dandelions beyond where she had planted. The island stretched away from him, larger than he had realized; there was even an actual wood in the distance, clearly very small compared to the great northern forests but probably large enough for one to get lost without proper caution.

Even for an astronomer, this was late in the morning, and Morgan was undoubtedly up and about. He dressed slowly, wincing now and then as the aches in his muscles reminded him just how long he’d lain on wood planks that were nowhere near as flat as they should have been. Perhaps it was just as well that it was impossible to make a secret exit now; he had no serious injuries, but rowing would be too much of an inconvenience and an ordeal for a while.

Stefan stretched, massaging his left shoulder as he exited the guest room and shut the

door behind him. In the hall across from the door hung a large painting showing a scrubland pierced by a wide river, the river itself filled with old-style longships of various sizes, sails billowing and dove-marked flags waving. In the background, the square, squat silhouette of a walled city loomed. In the foreground, two huscarls in elaborate chainmail and winged helmets carried a black stone that resembled nothing less than a miniature pyramid, and which was decorated with primitive human-shaped figures and strange geometric designs.

Morgan’s house was like a museum. A museum standing alone on a small island somewhere between Trest and Marbella, with no fences or watchtowers, inhabited by a young widow and some wild birds. A small island that, judging by the peace and quiet, was completely absent from the charts of the Empire’s merchants and Libertalian rogues and Ninevan slavers. It certainly suggested a puzzle; perhaps he would find more clues while waiting for the ship she’d mentioned.

He found Morgan eating breakfast in the garden, accompanied this time by an entire family of starlings who had found something fascinating to dig up next to the path.

“Friends of yours?” Stefan joked.

“Yes,” she replied, setting her plate on the ground next to her. “That little brown one was born in the cherry tree, right outside my window. How are you this morning?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Here, let me get you something to eat.” She rose and walked back towards the kitchen door. The birds hopped a couple of steps away, and as they entered the house one had seated himself on her plate, preening his wing feathers contentedly.

Stefan leaned on the kitchen table and watched Morgan rummage through a cabinet, then a couple of wood boxes by the sink. “Do you like cheese?” she asked. “I know I have some around here somewhere . . . ah, here we are. I’m sorry it’s a little old.”

He accepted a plate piled with the cheese along with more black bread. “I’m sure it’s just fine.” He took a bite, and it was. “Thank you again. I was admiring your decorations upstairs. What is that painting in the hall outside the guest room? It looks like an Alfred Alonso, yes?”

“Ah, I know the one you mean – it’s called ’Victory at Heliopolis.”

Stefan nodded. “Heliopolis? Like the town in Tanis?” He set his plate on the table while she retrieved hers from outside.

“Yes. It shows the Jomsvikings on the way home from their successful raid, taking the Obelisk of Akhenaten as a prize. Are you familiar with the story?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“They say it’s why the Ninevan corsairs go out of their way to attack the Seven Sisters whenever they can.”

Stefan narrowed his eyes, swallowing the last of the cheese in a piece somewhat larger than he probably should have attempted. “Really?” he coughed. “That would have been, what, three hundred years ago?”

“Even more than that, I think.” She hovered over him, a concerned expression on her face, but his coughing subsided rapidly. “I guess they don’t believe in forgiveness.”

“Or moving on.”

“I think I have a history of the Jomsvikings in the study somewhere.” Morgan nodded towards the door, and they went through, picking a path around the orrery and its little balls of light. She stopped in front of a tall bookshelf, running her eyes over the volumes packed in on the higher rows. “I’m pretty sure it’s up there; it should be one of those ones with a gilded spine. Feel free to read it; or anything else, for that matter.”

“None of these are your private diaries or something?”

He winked, and she laughed. “No, those are all buried under the apple trees out front. Enjoy! I’ll be back shortly; I need to check my star charts for tonight’s observations.”

Stefan stood up on a conveniently placed footstool and picked out a couple of the gilded volumes. The first turned out to be a book of recipes, but the second was the one she had mentioned, the title Doves of Jomsburg embossed on its cover. He seated himself in an armchair and opened it. The pages were smooth and still carried a distinctive papery odor, the printing in a rounded, flowing style.

The Jomsvikings have been many things over the centuries – pirates, raiders, crusaders, explorers, merchants, knights; and on occasion, all these at once. Those who indulge in metaphor would no doubt say they wear many hats, a fitting expression considering Adailton’s reputation for constantly changing fashions.

His eyes wandered from the page, and he settled deeper into the armchair with a sigh. He usually had little time to spare for reading, much less relaxing, and he had to fight a reflex to feel guilty about being idle, shipwreck or no. The room was light and airy, and the sunlight glinted gently on Morgan’s gadgets and the gilt binding of the more expensive books. He was supposed to be in Adailton soon, yes, but he really should stop and smell the roses (and the books) more often; after all, a man couldn’t wear the same hat all the time, metaphorical or otherwise.

He turned the page. The early parts of the book were written more like poetic prose than a history, and Stefan read of the longboats plying the wide, slow Falskov River to its mouth, where Dove Island lay blanketed in trees under the timeless light of the Queens. He read, letting the images soak into his mind without care for strategies or politics or money, for the first time in what felt like much too long.

He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep again until he heard a clatter from the hallway.

“I’m sorry!” Morgan called. “That was just me. Believe it or not, I dropped this.” She appeared in the doorway, holding an astrolabe. “I’m not quite sure how I managed it, but it doesn’t seem to be broken.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Stefan replied. “How long was I asleep?”

“Hm, about two and a half hours, I think?”

He shook his head blearily, setting the book down on the chair’s arm. “I’m sorry. Must’ve – ”

“Don’t be silly! You’re more than entitled to rest. There’s nothing at all to be embarrassed about.” She smiled, cradling the astrolabe in the palm of her hand.

In the end, the history of the Jomsvikings sat unused on the chair’s arm for the entire afternoon, as he was active in relatively short bursts, interspersed with an hour or two of such heavy weariness that he could barely stand up. By evening, though, he felt quite a bit better. He was reluctant to admit it even to himself, but there was no way he would have made it if he had tried to sneak off the island.

As the sun sank towards the western horizon, the wind died down and the cherry tree

behind the kitchen stood tall and stately. Morgan emerged from the study, carrying the astrolabe in one hand and a small bundle of paper under the other arm.

“Stefan, I was going to ask you – do you feel like joining me tonight to make some observations? I can always use a second person to help with my telescope.”

“Don’t know how much I know about telescopes . . .” Did she know of his troubles the previous night? Her expression betrayed nothing, as yet. “But I’d be glad to.”

The telescope turned out to be on a balcony high above the house’s front yard, accompanied by another small table and chairs and still more calculations scattered across both, weighed down in some places by extra lenses. It was a slim five-foot tube with a little nest of gears and machinery, and he was in his element as he noted which one turned which other, how they related to the markings on the ring that served as the azimuth scale.

“And this,” Morgan said, “adjusts the focus when you look in the eyepiece.”

“Brilliant. I hate to admit I never thought that much about the stars. Until now.”

“Look.” She inclined her head towards the east, where the White Queen was rising glimmering and gibbous above the sea. “Let’s start with her.” His hands flashed over the levers and gears, aiming the telescope straight at the moon. “Take a look.”

Stefan leaned over and peered through the eyepiece. His breath caught in his throat as he beheld a smooth, grey vista, marked here and there with craters and mountains. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the White Queen’s surface, he also noticed larger shaded expanses that were almost the color of the sea.

He dragged his attention from the eyepiece. Morgan was smiling at him. “Is that real?” he gasped.

For half the night, they moved the barrel from one star to the next to the next. And as the Red Queen’s white lakes and the Lady of the Morning’s great green halo burned themselves into his memory, and they traced the River of Veles filled with more stars than there were drops in the ocean, he began to understand how people could believe they held some sort of power.

* * *

On his second morning on the island, clouds blew in from the north, and the starlings kept up their activity in the yard as the rain started to fall. It continued through the middle of the day, running in streams down the study window as Morgan picked a hardcover tome from the shelf and opened it to an illustration near the back, inviting Stefan to examine it.

It was a schematic diagram of a flat-topped pyramid. The structure’s dimensions were marked along the outside of the illustration, and they were staggering: a height of just over two hundred feet, its base a perfect square with sides six hundred and fifty feet.

“That’s what you and Daniel were researching?”

“One of the things, yes,” Morgan explained, “and the most recent. He’d been studying them his whole life, though, years before we married. You know, the same chartered company that excavated this pyramid built our house.” She turned the page to an artist’s impression of murals found on the structure’s higher faces.

“That’s the Golden Spiral.” Stefan gestured at the image at the top of the left-hand page. “But what’s this?” The bottom half of the page was occupied by a strange image of two interlocked triangles, within which were eight small circles laid out in no pattern he was familiar with.

“I believe it was intended to be a representation of the Prince – the constellation. This could be his head, and his arm raised to wave here. It doesn’t exactly match the Prince as we know it, but we never were able to find anything that seemed more likely.”

Stefan tried to draw the image she’d described in his mind’s eye. “The Lemurians were interested in astronomy?”

“They were positively obsessed with it,” said Morgan. “The other day I told you about the Eastern Wanderer, and beyond things like that, they believed that the connections between the earth and the sky were what moved the world and everything in it – the source of power and magic. ‘As above, so below.’ There were temples with windows decorated like the Red and White Queens, and stones that align with the sunrise and sunset on specific days. Even after all these years, we’ve only scratched the surface, really.”

“Never would’ve guessed.” His gaze wandered to a rectangle filled with tessellated triangles and similar small circles. “What constellation is that?”

“I’m not sure – possibly Thor’s Chariot. I haven’t been to the pyramids for . . . a while.” He knew what she was referring to. She stared at the page as a wistful smile grew on her

face. In the bottom right corner a line of text explained: Artist’s re-creation based on rubbings taken by Daniel and Morgan Rose. He looked at her until she lifted her face to meet his gaze.

“I’m sorry I never had the chance to meet him.”

Morgan blinked a few times. “I think the two of you would have gotten along very well.” With one last glance at the illustration, she closed the book and set it down on a low shelf.

He started slightly as she suddenly patted him on the elbow. “It’s almost lunch time. What would you like?”

Stefan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Anything Lemurian?”

“Ah! Their taste in food remains even more mysterious than their religion.” Their laughter rose above the rain’s steady drumming on the roof as they left the room.

* * *

On his fourth morning on the island, Stefan was sitting in Morgan’s study, thinking about how he hadn’t shaved since Singaraja. He’d almost never considered stopping, no more than he’d consider failing to check his calculations or leaving behind his protractor (which was now presumably at the bottom of the sea). He thought about how he’d never been entirely happy with his chin, and how a beard might improve the lines of his face once it came in. If he grew his hair out a little more, he might even manage to look a little like a Jomsviking. His contemplation was interrupted when Morgan emerged from the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a towel.

“How did you know you could trust me? That first day.” He trailed off and noticed that she was wearing bright blue, the first time he’d seen such a color on her. It looked . . . right.

She smiled. “I don’t think I’m that out of touch, Stefan!” She stopped near the orrery, folding the towel in quarters. “And besides, sometimes you just have to have faith.”

“Went with your instincts, eh?” She picked up a large stack of papers that had occupied the seat of an armchair in the corner, and started for the door that led to the stairs. “Can I help you with that at all, Morgan?”

“Oh, it’s not necessary. You’re my guest; and besides, you’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m fine, really. I don’t feel right letting you carry all that . . .”

“You’re a sweetheart, Stefan. But it’s not that heavy; just some things I really should have filed better before.” She glanced back mischievously as she reached the door. “I’ll be upstairs – don’t hurt yourself picking up those hardcover books!”

He shook his head, swallowing a laugh. Perhaps it was nothing more than the circumstances of their first meeting, or the close-quarters living circumstances, but he was rapidly becoming accustomed to Morgan’s company, to a degree he would not have expected when he first arrived. The ease and comfort with which they interacted made him, in a strange way, uncomfortable. He was concerned less about how much time he had spent on her island or the fact that his contacts in Adailton had probably reported him missing, and more about the fact that he couldn’t get himself to be particularly concerned about either.

He rose and made his way back towards the kitchen. A small page similar to the calculations she had shown him the other day rested next to the orrery. He glanced at it instinctively as he passed by, but this seemed to hold no numerals or equations, only handwriting. The part he could see seemed to be about something that would be “removed from the site for sale, very shortly”.

A swirl of competing thoughts rose in Stefan's head. As little as he knew of Lemuria, he did know of the demand for relics, both authentic and fake, and that countries, including the Empire, had banned their trafficking to discourage people from looting archeological sites. The cost of furnishing Morgan’s large and luxurious house crossed his mind, as did the fact that as an official representative of the Empire in foreign lands, he was obligated to report any breaches of laws that involved cross-border movements.

He watched the bright glass spheres move for a while, wondering how he should feel. He wondered how Morgan would feel in turn, were she to learn that more of his business in Singaraja had been with people hiding from the Sultan’s justice than with the Sultan himself; or that his previous stop on the passage to Adailton had in fact been Libertalia, that the last crew he’d sailed with was not, as far as he knew, dead, and that he had gotten on the raft only at swordpoint. Whatever else she might be, she was also warm, and kind, and caring, and perhaps that was enough for now. As things stood, the two of them were in a different orbit than the Sultan and the Electors and the Free Captains, and such questions were not in their stars, not right now.

Stefan turned his back on the orrery and the letter and looked out the window, at the garden. One of the starlings fluttered into the air, drawing his attention to two strawberry

plants standing near a clump of poppies. They were evidently an ever-bearing strain, as a number of bright red fruits hung from their lush branches, and many of them looked to him to be almost ripe. He smiled to himself. Morgan had warned him away from the hardcover books, but not the garden.

By the time she was done upstairs, he had seated himself on the armchair she had cleared, and didn’t look up as she came in. “I hope,” he greeted her, “you don’t mind my monopolizing your history of the Jomsvikings. Fascinating people.”

“Not at all, Stefan! You’ll learn a lot more about them when you get to Adailton – wait. What is this?”

“What is what?”

He kept his eyes on the page as she stood over the desk, looking down at the basket of strawberries. “Oh, Stefan, I told you to save your strength.”

“I know.”

“You were in a shipwreck not a week ago.”

“I know.”

He stole a glance out of the corner of his eye. Morgan’s hands were on her hips, but she was grinning. “I wonder what I should make with them. It’s past Midsummer, of course, but perhaps something for dessert? I might have some metaxa around . . .” Stefan looked up, and the earnest gleam in her eyes made him grin too.

* * *

On his sixth morning on the island, Stefan was in the kitchen when Morgan called him to the high balcony where the telescope sat. It was pointing west, but he didn’t need it to make out the small triangle-rigged ship approaching in the distance, once she pointed it out. The sea was calm and sunlit, without even a hint of the turbulence that had brought him to the island. He smiled, but it was a little harder than he expected, and he wondered if she noticed.

“That should be my friend from Adailton,” she explained. “I think they’ll be here in a day or two.”

“I see,” he replied. Neither of them looked at each other for a moment. “Morgan, I can’t thank you enough. For everything.”

“Thank you, too. It’s been a long time since I had a man about the house. It was . . .”

He waited. “Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

Stefan raised his hand to shield his eyes from the bright sun. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like the idea that I don’t have a choice.”

“How did you wash ashore here, practically on my doorstep?”

“I don’t know.”

“The odds against it are astronomical – and I’m an astronomer, so I should know.”

“Yet it happened,” he said.

“That’s exactly my point.” She glanced away and toyed with the telescope’s eyepiece.

They stared out to the west for a lonely moment. The tiny outline of the ship bobbed on the waves as a group of seagulls circled to land on the beach below them. “Any going-away advice for a seafaring man?” Stefan said at last.

Morgan looked up at him, and her eyes were glittering. “Watch the skies.”

The following is from the first chapter of a fantasy novel I am currently writing, also entitled Season of Awakening.

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The next morning started slowly, especially since Stefan didn’t wake until well after the sun was up. Despite everything that had already happened, he had still harboured a hope that he might be able to rise earlier than his host, get his hands on the kind of small boat that one who lived on an island must surely have, and make his way to somewhere near a route used by the Imperial convoys or merchants from one of the Seven Sisters. There were things about his visit to Singaraja he hadn’t been able to tell her – couldn’t tell her, and it would have been better to leave before the questions turned in that direction, because of the risk to him and because of the risk to her. As eccentric as she was and as unusual as her living arrangements might be, it seemed clear that she was just a civilian, and it would have been the best way for him to show gratitude for all she had done.

But when he opened the curtains, he found that it was mid-morning, and the cool autumn sunlight dazzled him for a moment. He craned his neck, taking in the view. Morgan’s garden was unfenced, and the edges blended into the surrounding landscape, relatively seamless except for the longer grass and wild dandelions beyond where she had planted. The island stretched away from him, larger than he had realized; there was even an actual wood in the distance, clearly very small compared to the great northern forests but probably large enough for one to get lost without proper caution.

Even for an astronomer, this was late in the morning, and Morgan was undoubtedly up and about. He dressed slowly, wincing now and then as the aches in his muscles reminded him just how long he’d lain on wood planks that were nowhere near as flat as they should have been. Perhaps it was just as well that it was impossible to make a secret exit now; he had no serious injuries, but rowing would be too much of an inconvenience and an ordeal for a while.

Stefan stretched, massaging his left shoulder as he exited the guest room and shut the

door behind him. In the hall across from the door hung a large painting showing a scrubland pierced by a wide river, the river itself filled with old-style longships of various sizes, sails billowing and dove-marked flags waving. In the background, the square, squat silhouette of a walled city loomed. In the foreground, two huscarls in elaborate chainmail and winged helmets carried a black stone that resembled nothing less than a miniature pyramid, and which was decorated with primitive human-shaped figures and strange geometric designs.

Morgan’s house was like a museum. A museum standing alone on a small island somewhere between Trest and Marbella, with no fences or watchtowers, inhabited by a young widow and some wild birds. A small island that, judging by the peace and quiet, was completely absent from the charts of the Empire’s merchants and Libertalian rogues and Ninevan slavers. It certainly suggested a puzzle; perhaps he would find more clues while waiting for the ship she’d mentioned.

He found Morgan eating breakfast in the garden, accompanied this time by an entire family of starlings who had found something fascinating to dig up next to the path.

“Friends of yours?” Stefan joked.

“Yes,” she replied, setting her plate on the ground next to her. “That little brown one was born in the cherry tree, right outside my window. How are you this morning?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Here, let me get you something to eat.” She rose and walked back towards the kitchen door. The birds hopped a couple of steps away, and as they entered the house one had seated himself on her plate, preening his wing feathers contentedly.

Stefan leaned on the kitchen table and watched Morgan rummage through a cabinet, then a couple of wood boxes by the sink. “Do you like cheese?” she asked. “I know I have some around here somewhere . . . ah, here we are. I’m sorry it’s a little old.”

He accepted a plate piled with the cheese along with more black bread. “I’m sure it’s just fine.” He took a bite, and it was. “Thank you again. I was admiring your decorations upstairs. What is that painting in the hall outside the guest room? It looks like an Alfred Alonso, yes?”

“Ah, I know the one you mean – it’s called ’Victory at Heliopolis'.”

Stefan nodded. “Heliopolis? Like the town in Tanis?” He set his plate on the table while she retrieved hers from outside.

“Yes. It shows the Jomsvikings on the way home from their successful raid, taking the Obelisk of Akhenaten as a prize. Are you familiar with the story?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“They say it’s why the Ninevan corsairs go out of their way to attack the Seven Sisters whenever they can.”

Stefan narrowed his eyes, swallowing the last of the cheese in a piece somewhat larger than he probably should have attempted. “Really?” he coughed. “That would have been, what, three hundred years ago?”

“Even more than that, I think.” She hovered over him, a concerned expression on her face, but his coughing subsided rapidly. “I guess they don’t believe in forgiveness.”

“Or moving on.”

“I think I have a history of the Jomsvikings in the study somewhere.” Morgan nodded towards the door, and they went through, picking a path around the orrery and its little balls of light. She stopped in front of a tall bookshelf, running her eyes over the volumes packed in on the higher rows. “I’m pretty sure it’s up there; it should be one of those ones with a gilded spine. Feel free to read it; or anything else, for that matter.”

“None of these are your private diaries or something?”

He winked, and she laughed. “No, those are all buried under the apple trees out front. Enjoy! I’ll be back shortly; I need to check my star charts for tonight’s observations.”

Stefan stood up on a conveniently placed footstool and picked out a couple of the gilded volumes. The first turned out to be a book of recipes, but the second was the one she had mentioned, the title Doves of Jomsburg embossed on its cover. He seated himself in an armchair and opened it. The pages were smooth and still carried a distinctive papery odor, the printing in a rounded, flowing style.

The Jomsvikings have been many things over the centuries – pirates, raiders, crusaders, explorers, merchants, knights; and on occasion, all these at once. Those who indulge in metaphor would no doubt say they wear many hats, a fitting expression considering Adailton’s reputation for constantly changing fashions.

His eyes wandered from the page, and he settled deeper into the armchair with a sigh. He usually had little time to spare for reading, much less relaxing, and he had to fight a reflex to feel guilty about being idle, shipwreck or no. The room was light and airy, and the sunlight glinted gently on Morgan’s gadgets and the gilt binding of the more expensive books. He was supposed to be in Adailton soon, yes, but he really should stop and smell the roses (and the books) more often; after all, a man couldn’t wear the same hat all the time, metaphorical or otherwise.

He turned the page. The early parts of the book were written more like poetic prose than a history, and Stefan read of the longboats plying the wide, slow Falskov River to its mouth, where Dove Island lay blanketed in trees under the timeless light of the Queens. He read, letting the images soak into his mind without care for strategies or politics or money, for the first time in what felt like much too long.

He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep again until he heard a clatter from the hallway.

“I’m sorry!” Morgan called. “That was just me. Believe it or not, I dropped this.” She appeared in the doorway, holding an astrolabe. “I’m not quite sure how I managed it, but it doesn’t seem to be broken.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Stefan replied. “How long was I asleep?”

“Hm, about two and a half hours, I think?”

He shook his head blearily, setting the book down on the chair’s arm. “I’m sorry. Must’ve – ”

“Don’t be silly! You’re more than entitled to rest. There’s nothing at all to be embarrassed about.” She smiled, cradling the astrolabe in the palm of her hand.

In the end, the history of the Jomsvikings sat unused on the chair’s arm for the entire afternoon, as he was active in relatively short bursts, interspersed with an hour or two of such heavy weariness that he could barely stand up. By evening, though, he felt quite a bit better. He was reluctant to admit it even to himself, but there was no way he would have made it if he had tried to sneak off the island.

As the sun sank towards the western horizon, the wind died down and the cherry tree

behind the kitchen stood tall and stately. Morgan emerged from the study, carrying the astrolabe in one hand and a small bundle of paper under the other arm.

“Stefan, I was going to ask you – do you feel like joining me tonight to make some observations? I can always use a second person to help with my telescope.”

“Don’t know how much I know about telescopes . . .” Did she know of his troubles the previous night? Her expression betrayed nothing, as yet. “But I’d be glad to.”

The telescope turned out to be on a balcony high above the house’s front yard, accompanied by another small table and chairs and still more calculations scattered across both, weighed down in some places by extra lenses. It was a slim five-foot tube with a little nest of gears and machinery, and he was in his element as he noted which one turned which other, how they related to the markings on the ring that served as the azimuth scale.

“And this,” Morgan said, “adjusts the focus when you look in the eyepiece.”

“Brilliant. I hate to admit I never thought that much about the stars. Until now.”

“Look.” She inclined her head towards the east, where the White Queen was rising glimmering and gibbous above the sea. “Let’s start with her.” His hands flashed over the levers and gears, aiming the telescope straight at the moon. “Take a look.”

Stefan leaned over and peered through the eyepiece. His breath caught in his throat as he beheld a smooth, grey vista, marked here and there with craters and mountains. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the White Queen’s surface, he also noticed larger shaded expanses that were almost the color of the sea.

He dragged his attention from the eyepiece. Morgan was smiling at him. “Is that real?” he gasped.

For half the night, they moved the barrel from one star to the next to the next. And as the Red Queen’s white lakes and the Lady of the Morning’s great green halo burned themselves into his memory, and they traced the River of Veles filled with more stars than there were drops in the ocean, he began to understand how people could believe they held some sort of power.

Many evolutionary biologists believe that there would never have been life on Earth if not for the moon. Not only does its orbit have a noticeable (and unexplained) effect on various physiological cycles, some researchers have suggested that the tides helped early animals move from the ocean onto land.

On a related note, modern analysis of gravitational fields in the solar system has shown that every planet and moon does in fact have a noticeable effect on every other planet and moon. Jupiter's gravitational impact is the largest, simply because it's the largest planet in the solar system. It's mostly made of gases like hydrogen, and astronomers have estimated that if it were slightly heavier (slightly by cosmic standards, that is), it would have reached the point where hydrogen could spontaneously fuse in its core - that is, it would have been another star. It's not clear whether that would have made Earth come out like Tatooine, though.

Our solar system is actually in the slight minority in that it only has one sun. Modern telescope observations have found that two or more is actually very common. In fact, many of the nearest star systems to Earth have three or more, including Alpha Centauri and Sirius.

Sirius, incidentally, was also one of the most important stars in ancient Egyptian mythology. It was associated with the god Osiris, the ruler of the underworld, who was said to have been the first being to be mummified. Interestingly, there is a shaft in the Great Pyramid at Giza which points directly at Sirius at certain times of the year. Not only does that involve a degree of precision engineering that we were only able to replicate in recent history, we don't know exactly what this symbolized to the Egyptians. Some people have speculated that it was a reference to resurrection or to the journey to the underworld, but in the absence of more explicit records from their time, your guess is as good as anyone's.

And we'll end with another story that many of you are probably familiar with: the Star of Bethlehem. The story is widely known in a form where the star literally leads the Wise Men to Bethlehem, which has prompted speculations of meteors, supernovae, and even more unusual phenomena. Recently, though, another theory has emerged which suggests that it was partially symbolic, and referred to an unusual conjunction involving Saturn, a planet which was associated with kingship and with the Jews specifically. 

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WesternPaladin

********

He waited for a moment while the front page of Prose refreshed. There was a now-familiar red dot on the “Activity” icon in the top right of the screen. Without waiting for the page to load fully, he clicked on it.

OnyxCity started following you.

2 hours ago

He blinked several times, releasing his grip on the mouse. The last time he’d seen those two words used so close together was almost a year ago, continents away. They reminded him of the smell of those old books bound in some type of leather no-one had ever seen; of the ship they’d found drifting with no sign of the crew on board, and of dark mountains shivering under strange stars.

He pushed it from his mind. It had to be a coincidence. Nobody could possibly have known about that expedition to the Antarctic - they’d managed to keep it out of the press, though it had cost them a fortune. And that was without counting the promises made and favors owed to every government with an interest in the frozen continent. Certainly there was nothing amiss with this person’s profile: a close-up photo of an ordinary-looking person, presumably OnyxCity herself. An address for her personal website.

And here was some blank verse, posted just a day ago. It was a somber, reflective piece about the protagonist’s emotional state. Little, it seemed, to distinguish it from the other poems that went up on Prose every day. He raised an eyebrow when he reached the closing stanza, which had an odd rhythm unlike the rest of the poem. Even though the poem was mostly made up of short, everyday words, it ended with the word “firmament”.

He closed the poem and navigated to another of her posts. This one was about summer, and its imagery was suitably light and breezy. It was only four verses long, and the fourth verse’s cadence again shifted dramatically compared to the other three. Its rhythm was jarring, even as it spoke of an eternal green meadow, and a chill crept up his spine.

He stared at the screen for a minute, and another, not blinking, until it felt like his eyes were on fire. Then he leapt to his feet. It took only a second to reach the trunk he’d brought on the Antarctic expedition. He hurled the papers on top of it to the floor, threw it open, and started rummaging through its contents. He’d used the ciphers a thousand times, and he more or less knew them by heart, but in a situation like this, he had to be absolutely certain.

It took him hours to copy every one of OnyxCity’s poems onto paper. It took him more to make the calculations and transpositions for each one in turn, starting with the oldest and going all the way to the most recent. Evening slipped away to night, and the sun rose again outside, but he didn’t notice as pages torn from his pad piled up around him. Even as he found a description that matched no planet in the solar system, he tried to imagine it might still be a coincidence. Even as a collection of haiku became an incantation to the King in Yellow, he still prayed he had made a mistake in his calculations. Even as her most popular short story concealed a quotation that exactly matched a passage from the Mad Arab’s writings, he still half expected to wake up at any moment.

He pushed the pages to the floor, his hand shaking. On his monitor, the browser window was still open to Prose. By reflex, he pressed the refresh button again. There was a new post on OnyxCity’s profile, a mere ten lines worth of rhyming couplets. His head swam as he performed the calculations one final time. The pencil fell from his nerveless fingers.

For the one who has read and understood. He awaits you in Stethelos.

Enter username and password.

WesternPaladin

********

He waited for a moment while the front page of Prose refreshed. There was a now-familiar red dot on the “Activity” icon in the top right of the screen. Without waiting for the page to load fully, he clicked on it.

OnyxCity started following you.

2 hours ago

He blinked several times, releasing his grip on the mouse. The last time he’d seen those two words used so close together was almost a year ago, continents away. They reminded him of the smell of those old books bound in some type of leather no-one had ever seen; of the ship they’d found drifting with no sign of the crew on board, and of dark mountains shivering under strange stars.

He pushed it from his mind. It had to be a coincidence. Nobody could possibly have known about that expedition to the Antarctic - they’d managed to keep it out of the press, though it had cost them a fortune. And that was without counting the promises made and favors owed to every government with an interest in the frozen continent. Certainly there was nothing amiss with this person’s profile: a close-up photo of an ordinary-looking person, presumably OnyxCity herself. An address for her personal website.

And here was some blank verse, posted just a day ago. It was a somber, reflective piece about the protagonist’s emotional state. Little, it seemed, to distinguish it from the other poems that went up on Prose every day. He raised an eyebrow when he reached the closing stanza, which had an odd rhythm unlike the rest of the poem. Even though the poem was mostly made up of short, everyday words, it ended with the word “firmament”.

He closed the poem and navigated to another of her posts. This one was about summer, and its imagery was suitably light and breezy. It was only four verses long, and the fourth verse’s cadence again shifted dramatically compared to the other three. Its rhythm was jarring, even as it spoke of an eternal green meadow, and a chill crept up his spine.

He stared at the screen for a minute, and another, not blinking, until it felt like his eyes were on fire. Then he leapt to his feet. It took only a second to reach the trunk he’d brought on the Antarctic expedition. He hurled the papers on top of it to the floor, threw it open, and started rummaging through its contents. He’d used the ciphers a thousand times, and he more or less knew them by heart, but in a situation like this, he had to be absolutely certain.

It took him hours to copy every one of OnyxCity’s poems onto paper. It took him more to make the calculations and transpositions for each one in turn, starting with the oldest and going all the way to the most recent. Evening slipped away to night, and the sun rose again outside, but he didn’t notice as pages torn from his pad piled up around him. Even as he found a description that matched no planet in the solar system, he tried to imagine it might still be a coincidence. Even as a collection of haiku became an incantation to the King in Yellow, he still prayed he had made a mistake in his calculations. Even as her most popular short story concealed a quotation that exactly matched a passage from the Mad Arab’s writings, he still half expected to wake up at any moment.

He pushed the pages to the floor, his hand shaking. On his monitor, the browser window was still open to Prose. By reflex, he pressed the refresh button again. There was a new post on OnyxCity’s profile, a mere ten lines worth of rhyming couplets. His head swam as he performed the calculations one final time. The pencil fell from his nerveless fingers.

For the one who has read and understood. He awaits you in Stethelos.

Over the years, I've been pretty much every type of professional wrestling fan. The first time I ever watched it I was about six years old, and I'm pretty sure I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Later, in high school, I had a friend who followed the old World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He'd occasionally come over on weekends and we'd watch the replay of Monday Nitro, and he would leap off the couch with glee every time Bill Goldberg spear-tackled somebody. For my part, I was entering a phase of my life where I was much too serious and analytical for my own good: I enjoyed the matches but sighed heavily whenever one ended early due to outside interference.

In the 2000s, I watched World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) sporadically but with bursts of intensity. Remember, this was before Tivo-style recording systems, and they were running a brand extension after absorbing the recently defunct WCW and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). As such, Foxtel would show upwards of six hours of wrestling a week, with each show featuring different performers and storylines. It was one of the most difficult possible times for a casual fan to try and go deeper, yet it was also the era of performers like Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Rock, Edge, Rob Van Dam, Chris Jericho, Triple H, and a certain young upstart named John Cena, which made it one of the best possible times to learn about the theater elements of wrestling.

However, I wouldn't start seriously watching week in and week out until just last year, and by that time the world of wrestling fandom had become a very different place. When I was in high school, if you couldn't catch Monday Nitro, you would have to wait for the weekend or buy a VCR - the words "live blog" were decades away. If you keep a careful eye on an episode of Raw or Smackdown, you'll notice that there is always a hashtag suggestion for social media users at the top left corner of the screen. Sometimes they go so far as to repost selected Twitter reactions in a ticker on the bottom of the screen. And from there, I quickly went down the rabbit hole to the dirt sheets and fan forums; to the backstage rumors, storyline predictions, and character (over)analysis, and to the power rankings, and letter grades for matches, and arguments over which performer possesses that most nebulous attribute of "technical skill".

There are undeniable benefits to elements of being a knowledgeable fan, and to certain elements of what knowledgeable fans know. An in-depth understanding of one's hobby is certainly beneficial. Echo chambers and rigid orthodoxy are certainly not, and it's sad when internet discussion - in any fandom - takes that direction.

For my part, in the time between pre-ordering my ticket to the WWE live show in Melbourne and actually getting ready to go to it, I had started to feel a little burned out. I'd gotten into the habit of scanning the news sites between broadcasts, and I'd inadvertantly chosen some pretty cynical ones to read. I was actually considering going on hiatus for a while, even with the possibility of never catching up on the storyline.

I arrived at the Rod Laver Arena more than an hour early, and the first thing that struck me was the crowd's average age. That age was around mine, early 30s - but in a most technical manner, as many members of the audience were very young, early teens or so, accompanied by their parents or even grandparents. There were men and women, and not all from the same high school clique type - I would later pass time during intermission conversing with a group who resembled adult versions of the Goth kids from South Park and who had been trying to start a comedic chant in the outdoor section of the lobby. As you might expect, almost everyone was wearing the colors and signs of their favorite wrestlers, and there was more variety among those favorites than you'll ever see on forums. References to former indie darlings and "technical wizards" were under-represented, especially if you're used to the online environment. Parents in ancient Austin 3:16 and nWo t-shirts rubbed shoulders with middle schoolers decked head to toe in John Cena merchandise or Roman Reigns' recognizable fist icon. I found myself seated with two young girls of perhaps sixteen years to my left, and a man around my age accompanying a squad of elementary school-aged Cena fans to my right.

This was, as you may have surmised, my first time in a live WWE audience. One of the most important elements of a WWE wrestler is their entrance. The music, lighting, and routine are selected to go with the individual, and reinforce their on-stage character - without the right entrance, they're just some random person. When the actual show started, I learned that there is a world of difference between seeing an entrance on TV and being in the presence of one. The music sounds entirely different when it hasn't been digitized and beamed halfway across the planet; its impact seems much more direct, and you hear a militant Celtic march instead of just Sheamus' music, an ominous warning of threats to come instead of just AJ Styles' music. And the crowd's reactions are also entirely different when you are inside that crowd - striking as they are on TV, but far more intense and far more compelling.

And I was impressed by just how responsive that crowd was. It's hard to give cynical thoughts much credence when you're being deafened by 5,000 people chanting "New Day rocks!", and raising your voice along with the equivalent of the population of a small town to sing along with Sami Zayn's theme. It's hard not to be moved when the young women sitting to your left swoon in the aisle as Seth Rollins makes his way to the ring, or when the young man across the way names wrestlers' special moves as they perform them, or when the little girl on the other side of the ring weeps with joy as Sasha Banks leans over the barricade to hug her.

At the risk of hyperbole, the show may well have saved me as a wrestling fan. If you saw any tweets about three weeks ago along the lines of "What kind of 33-year-old man cheers his guts out for Roman Reigns?", that may well have been a reference to me by any internet-style smart fans in my section, who I presume were among the ones that spent most of each match making cell phone videos and most of the intermission posting on Twitter. But I put my phone in my pocket, and allowed myself to be swept up in the spectacle, and I understood something that neither me nor my friend from high school could articulate at the time; something that those young people in the audience hadn't yet forgotten. Wrestling - just like life - is beset by all that everyone knows you're supposedly supposed to do and say and be; yet in the end it is simply, in a liberating realization, about what you experience in each moment.

The room was full of people and heavy with noise. The austere plaster walls vibrated as they talked, argued, and laughed. They huddled around the long tables, poring over small printed cards in binders, trying to ignore the people trying to gain an advantage by reading over their shoulder. The heat was building rapidly, and the air would soon be thick with the tang of salt and sweat and nerves.

I ignored everyone. You can do that when you’re the best.

Undoubtedly, a lot of them were nervous because they recognized me. After all, I was one of the best Space: the Convergence players in the world. It’s not arrogance if it’s true, and I hadn’t lost a tournament in over five years. A lot of people didn’t realize the sort of dedication it takes to be the best, even at a “silly card game” like Space. I’d had so many people over the years tell me they could have won too, if only they’d had the best cards like I did, or if they could grind as much as I did. That’s the kind of thing scrubs tell themselves so they feel better about being scrubs. They just didn’t have my dedication – or my willingness to sacrifice. Oh yes, there had been sacrifice, but if you’re not willing to give something up for fame and money, you don’t really deserve it.

I wandered in the general direction of the organizer’s desk, brushing past more hopefuls, more cannon fodder. Some of them were talking about strategy as they passed, and I stifled a laugh. If they were a good indicator of what this crowd was like, I would be making serious bank today.

That’s when I saw him.

He didn’t exactly stand out, but once I noticed him I found I couldn’t tear my eyes away. And not just because I hadn’t seen him in almost six years. He was standing next to a man in a dirty sweatshirt at the end of one of the long tables, and leaning over to gesture enthusiastically at something in an open binder. He was dressed casually, but much more neatly than anyone else in the room, and despite the great press of people, there wasn’t a wrinkle or rumple anywhere on him.

The milling crowd seemed to slow, and people parted as I moved straight over to the table. The man in the sweatshirt flipped to the next page in the binder. The other man, the one I still hadn’t taken my eyes off, glanced at me as though he’d known I was there the whole time.

“Who designed these new cards?” he said. The din rose, with people calling to each other across the room, yet I heard every word clearly. “Destroys all your opponent’s ships, and leaves all of yours, and it only costs five resources? And they call me evil.”

He shook his head and turned away, examining the cards on the new page. Someone at the far side of the table made a bad joke, and laughter echoed down to our end. Moments passed and he was silent. “Why are you here?” I asked at last.

He still didn’t look at me as he replied, “It’s been six years since we last spoke.” He picked up a loose card from the table and examined it closely. “I thought I would come and see how you were doing.”

“You must know how I’m doing,” I snapped. “You of all people must know.”

“Oh, yes. You’re all over the internet. That last tournament report you wrote for STCTopDeck.org got 5,000 hits.” Another group of people passed behind me on their way out from the organizer’s table. I heard one of them mention my name as they went away. None of them looked at the man I was talking to. “But that’s not exactly what I meant.”

I turned in place, fidgeting with my sleeves. The room was even more packed than before. By now it was standing room only at some of the tables, and I was starting to sweat. I noticed the smell, which I thought was odd. I’d long since learned to tune it out, focus only on the cards, on my game. But now the odor of the crush of humanity seemed almost a physical thing, wrapped around me like a constrictor snake. I came back to face him, and my jaw dropped when I realized he still hadn’t looked up from the binder.

“What are you talking about?”

The man in the dirty sweatshirt closed the binder and stood up, and in a moment was lost in the bustle. He remained, fixing me with a gaze that made me hold my breath. There was a weight in that gaze, a distant echo of thoughts that had no earthly name but that shook me to the core. “What’s Tina up to these days?”

“Why do you want to know?” I answered, much too fast. The fact was, I hadn’t seen Tina in more than two years. Two weeks before a Pro Tour Qualifier, she'd wanted to go to a concert, I'd needed to practice, she’d said things, I’d ignored them and gone to practice . . .

“That Ron Stratford is an incredible artist.” He suddenly had a card in his hand, and was rolling it over and around his fingers like an old-time street magician. “Did you know he makes all his pieces by hand, with real brushes and paint? Look at the swirl of color right across the middle of this one.” He extended his hand, holding the card between his index and middle fingers, the side with the art and game text towards me. “You know, Degas said that art isn’t what you see – it’s what you make others see.”

I stared at the card. It was one I’d used probably a hundred times in my last tournament. It had won me more matches at the time than anything else – it had earned me $10,000. The painting depicted a black hole devouring a red dwarf star in a burst of swirling gas and light. I almost felt that if I leaned too far forward it might draw me in and I would be lost for ever in that endless expanse. And until right then, I had had no idea what the card looked like.

The noise of the assembled people around us seemed to fade, and I glanced left and right, then left and right again. The milling crowd seemed to be moving in slow motion as I turned back to him. His expression had not changed as he brandished the supernova painting at me, and when I looked back into the starscape I saw things I hadn’t thought of in such a long time. I saw the face of a fourteen-year-old boy I’d once played in the opening round of a tournament, where I’d crushed him and then left without shaking his hand. I saw the time I convinced someone to trade me a new, rare card for a much more common one, taking advantage of the fact that he liked the art I’d long stopped paying attention to. I saw the time I’d plied an opponent with loaded questions, convincing him to end his turn without making a play that could have won him the game. And I saw every night I’d lain next to Tina while she slept, poring over new cards on my netbook.

With a flick of his wrist, the supernova card vanished, and his eyes were dark as deep space and hot as brimstone. And in that moment, I understood that for every day of the past six years, I had been paying his price. And I understood that I would never stop paying.