As Night stood ready on one end of creation, so too did Day stand on the other.
For Day, terraces of gold and amber curved in wide rising layers, opening into broad plazas that spilled into sweeping overlooks. From each height, the bright blue sky stretched unbroken in every direction.
Bridges of radiant stone arced between the terraces, their surfaces gleaming as though polished by constant passage. Some ran straight and swift. Others spiraled gently through the air. Still others had been fashioned by the stars themselves, rope-and-wood structures that swayed lightly beneath passing feet.
Motion lived in it.
It moved through the terraces, through the air, through the very light that flowed across its sky. Even sections of the architecture itself were built upon great gears that moved entire terraces, rooms, and buildings in different directions.
And among it all, warm currents streamed between terraces and plazas like rivers of living radiance that bent and shifted like wind across tall grass. They ran in long sweeping arcs through the open air, gathering speed in some places, deepening and slowing in others, their patterns neither random nor entirely predictable.
And among it all was Soren.
Where other Day Court stars carried themselves with the easy forward momentum of a court built on motion, Soren’s lean form moved as though he had already calculated the most efficient path and followed it.
His hair was warm amber-gold, his skin golden. His eyes were amber shading toward hazel, and his glow, rather than flaring outward the way most Day stars’ did, pooled quietly around him. Steady, contained, present. When something fully caught his mind, when a measurement aligned or a pattern revealed itself, that glow would flare. Briefly, brilliantly, like sunlight on the surface of water.
The terrace where he worked suited him well.
It sat at the outer edge of the court, past the wide plazas where the currents ran strongest and the younger stars gathered in laughing clusters, past the rope bridges that swayed above the open sky, out to where the architecture thinned and the light of Day gave way to the vast open expanse beyond.
He had claimed a narrow stretch of railing at the terrace’s furthest point and spent more time at it than anywhere else in the court. From there, the great light currents were visible in their full sweep. Not the close rushing streams that ran between the inner terraces, but the wide, slow rivers of radiance that moved through the open sky in long, graceful arcs.
He watched intently, his gaze tracking the movement with focused attention. Measuring the arc of its curve, the rhythm of its pulse, the precise moment when it gathered speed and when it eased, all with tools he had crafted himself.
He had been doing this for what felt like a very long time, though in truth, he had no idea how long it had actually been. Time moved strangely when he was working. Though perhaps that was an aspect of the courts themselves. He made a mental note to check into that further when the current shifted. It was a subtle change in its arc, a slight deepening of its color, and he moved his tool a fraction to the right, tracking it.
Then, he lowered the rod-like tool slightly, his eyes narrowing.
The current did not move randomly. He had suspected this for a while, but now he was certain. There was a pattern in it. Not rigid, not mechanical, but present. The way breath had patterns. Something underlying the flow gave it shape and intention.
He reached into the satchel at his hip and withdrew a second rod-like tool, holding it parallel to the first.
The space between them hummed faintly.
He tilted his head.
Interesting.
Then footsteps approached from behind him. Bram, by the sound of it.
He stepped onto the outer terrace, a length of shaped golden metal over one shoulder and a small bundle of crystal rods under his arm, materials he had just finished refining.
Bram was broader than Soren, solid in the way that Day Court stars often were. His hair was amber-gold, his eyes warm amber and direct, and his glow was a steady, uncomplicated gold that neither shifted nor gathered but simply shone with reliable warmth.
Bram set his materials down with a deliberate clank.
“I’m measuring something,” Soren said without turning around.
“I can see that.”
“I’m not done.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
Bram settled himself against the railing a comfortable distance away and looked out at the open sky.
He had known Soren since shortly after they had both become aware of themselves, since that first quiet period when the court was still finding its shape and the stars were still finding each other. They had met on a terrace not unlike this one, both drawn to the outer edge by different instincts. Soren by the currents, Bram by the stonework.
They had stood side by side for a long time before either spoke.
Then Soren had said, without looking over:
“The joints in the bridge over there are wrong. The current will stress them unevenly.”
Bram had looked at the bridge a little way off, which another group of stars was constructing. Then at Soren. Then back at the bridge.
“I tried to warn them,” Bram had said.
From that exchange, a friendship had taken shape. Built not on ceremony but on the quiet satisfaction of being understood without having to explain yourself first.
“Essa’s coming soon,” Bram said now.
Essa, short for Tessala, was the third member of their group. The one who looked outward as Soren looked to the sky and Bram to the ground.
She carried a glow sitting warmly between Soren’s cooler gold and the fuller solar warmth of Bram’s, and was slight and fine-boned, easy to overlook until you were in conversation with her. Her eyes were another matter. Hazel-green, where almost every other Day Court star carried amber or gold, they were the first thing most people noticed and the thing they remembered longest after.
“Mm.”
“She found something in the lower grove. Said it was important.”
Soren raised one rod slightly and made a small adjustment on the measuring instrument.
“What did she find?”
Bram shrugged.
“She wouldn’t say. Just that we needed to see it.”
A beat.
“She had that look,” Bram added.
Soren finally glanced over.
“Which look?”
“The one where she’s already three conclusions ahead.”
“Hhm.”
Soren returned his gaze to the current.
Tessala arrived a few moments later.
She came through one of the court’s lower archways, and as she stepped from shadow into the open light of the terrace, her hair shifted. In the shadow of the arch, it had an almost green-gold color that changed to warm copper as she stepped into the direct light. As she walked toward them, a small salamander emerged from beneath the curtain of her hair, climbing to her shoulder and settling there, regarding the terrace ahead with the alert, unhurried attention of a creature entirely at home.
“I figured out something,” she said, stepping onto the terrace. “But I need to tell you how first.”
Soren glanced over.
“Is the how important?”
Essa looked at him. Then, at the measuring rods in his hands.
He followed her gaze.
“Noted,” he said, and turned back to the current.
“So, I was out in the lower grove with Pip,” she continued, settling herself on the railing with the ease of someone who had long ago decided that heights were not worth worrying about.
“He likes to do this thing where he finds a surface, matches it exactly, and then just disappears. And then stares at you. Waiting to see how long it takes you to find him.”
She paused.
“He’s very smug about it.”
On her shoulder, Pip raised his head and made a series of chirping clicking noises as if to deny the accusation.
“I didn’t say that was a bad thing, Pip,” she said, turning to address him directly in a completely different tone than the one she used with Soren and Bram. “In fact, I think it is rather adorable.”
Then she turned back to the two of them.
“So I was following him through the grove, trying to spot him. He’d gone ahead as he does, and I kept losing him against the bark. Then I saw him on one of the Solwood trees near the eastern edge. He’d matched the color perfectly, which was honestly impressive, but that’s when I noticed it. The tree pulsed. Just once. A slow, deep glow, like something breathing underneath it. And for just a moment, it lit Pip right up, amber from the inside out, before it faded again.”
She let that sit for a moment.
“I thought I’d imagined it. So I waited. And it happened again. And again. All of them, every Solwood tree in that part of the grove, pulsing together. Slow and regular. Like one breath shared between all of them.”
Bram looked up.
“Trees don’t breathe.”
“These ones might.”
“That’s not—”
Pip regarded Bram with what appeared to be mild disdain, then raised a hackle of flame along his neck, brief and precise, like punctuation, before settling back against her shoulder. Tessala didn’t seem to notice and kept right on with the conversation.
“I know, I know,” she said pleasantly to Bram. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
“Your creature is doing that thing again,” Bram said, looking at Pip.
“You say that like I know what you are talking about.”
“He doesn’t like me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Essa said, scratching Pip under his chin. “Of course, he likes you.”
Pip made a sound somewhere between a purr and a crackle, a chortle really, his scales shifting from deep amber to bright orange like coals finding new air, his tail giving one quick, slightly undignified wag before he stilled himself and resumed his former posture of complete indifference.
“What kind of rhythm?” Soren asked, still at the railing, his attention caught despite himself.
Essa turned toward him, pleased.
“Slow,” she said. “Regular. Like it comes from somewhere deeper than the trees themselves. And the light in the grove pools in the same places each time it pulses, gathering, then releasing.”
Soren set his rods down.
He turned around.
Tessala smiled. Getting Soren to turn around was always the sign that something was genuinely worth pursuing.
“The currents do something similar,” he said, almost to himself. “At certain points along their arc, they slow and deepen. I’ve been measuring it.” He gestured toward the railing. “And further out, past the—”
“Edge?” Bram said, with the quiet resignation of someone who already knew the answer.
“Just past it.”
Bram set down his crystal rods.
“Sor.”
“The current is stable at that point. I’ve measured it.”
“You’ve measured it from here.”
“The measurements are consistent.”
“Consistently from here,” Bram said, with great patience.
Tessala was watching Soren with an expression that was not quite concern and not quite anticipation, but something between them. Pip had turned to watch too, his small head tilted at the same angle as hers in a way that was either a coincidence or something more.
“What exactly do you think you’ll learn?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Soren said. “That’s the point.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Bram, grab his legs.”
Bram looked at her.
“Really?”
Tessala looked at him.
“...Right.”
He moved to Soren’s side and took hold.
“He’s going to do it anyway.”
Soren didn’t climb over the railing, but leaned out over it, one hand steady on the rail, Bram’s grip firm at his legs, and extended his arm toward the current.
His fingers met the edge of it.
The sensation was immediate. Warmth, and pressure, and something that moved against his hand like wind but was not wind. Like water, but was not water. Something that had direction, weight, and intention.
He pressed further.
His hand disappeared into the current up to the wrist.
The pull was stronger than he had anticipated.
Not violent. But definite. Purposeful. The current did not simply flow past him. It reached back.
He felt it at the slow point, the exact moment he had measured, the place where the light thickened and changed.
The light pooling, as Tessala had described in the grove. The same thing. Yes...
He leaned further.
His arm was in to the elbow now.
The pull intensified.
“Sor,” Bram said, somewhere behind him. Soren was so caught up in his experiment that he was just barely aware of the pressure on his legs and the sound of his friend’s voice.
The slow point was doing something to the light around his arm, gathering it, concentrating it, and he could feel it moving differently there, could feel the precise moment at which the current changed character, and he needed to understand it, needed to feel the full extent of—The current reached his shoulder.
And then it took him.
Not violently. Not with any malice.
It simply decided that if he was going to reach that far in, he was going to come the rest of the way.
Bram let out a surprised yelp, and Soren had one half-second of pure wordless alarm as his feet left the railing. Then the current had him completely, and alarm became irrelevant, because what replaced it was unlike anything he had words for.
The light moved through him and around him simultaneously. He was inside it, and it was inside him. The warmth he had felt at his fingertips was now everywhere, not hot, not burning, but alive in a way that made every other sensation he had ever had feel muted by comparison. He could feel the current’s pattern from within it, the rhythm he had been measuring from the outside, and it was not a pattern at all. It was a song. It had logic, intention, and beauty.
He was flying.
Or not flying exactly. Being carried. Being taken. At tremendous speed, along a path he had not chosen, in a direction he had not intended.
The terrace vanished behind him.
The court spread below him in a sweep of gold and amber and radiant stone, smaller than he had ever seen it, and still shrinking.
He made a decision.
If the current had logic, and it did, he had felt it, then it could be worked with. Not fought. Worked with. He stopped resisting the pull and instead paid attention to it, the way he paid attention to anything he wanted to understand. He felt the places where it strengthened and the places where it eased. He felt the way it preferred certain angles, certain orientations.
He shifted his weight.
The current responded.
He shifted again, and it responded again, and suddenly, he was not being carried. He was riding. There was a difference. A significant one. Being carried meant the current decided. Riding meant they decided together.
He laughed.
He couldn’t help it. The sound came out of him without permission, full and unrestrained, and the current seemed to respond to even that, brightening slightly around him, as though it too found something worth celebrating.
He leaned into it, found the fastest channel, and let it carry him in a wide blazing arc across the open sky.
He came back the way he had left, without entirely intending to.
The current curved back toward the court in its natural arc, and when it brought him close enough to the outer terrace to recognize it, he simply stepped free of it, landed on the stone with considerably less grace than he would have liked, stumbled two steps, caught the railing, and stood.
He stood there for a moment, breathing.
Then he turned around.
Stars crowded every level of the court, on bridges above, on terraces below, at railings and overlooks in every direction, watching him with the focused attention of people who had just seen something extraordinary. They stood very still and very quiet.
Soren looked at them.
They looked at Soren.
Bram stepped forward from where he had apparently been gripping the railing with considerable intensity.
“Welcome back,” he said.
Tessala appeared at his shoulder. Pip was very upright, his ember-amber eyes wide and intent.
“How did it feel?” she asked.
Soren looked at her.
He thought about the moment the current had taken him. The warmth through every part of him. The pattern that was a song. The shift from being carried to riding.
“Indescribable,” he said.
Tessala’s expression softened.
Then she looked at the railing.
Then at the open sky beyond it.
“Essa,” Bram said.
She stepped up onto the railing.
“Essa—”She jumped.
Not toward a current. Not toward anything visible. Simply out, into the open air beyond the terrace, with the clean committed motion of someone who had already done the calculation and trusted the answer.
Bram lunged to the railing instantly, one arm reaching out over the edge into the open air where she had been.
She was gone.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then several nearby stars surged toward the railing at once, voices rising, hands reaching over the edge into the empty air below. Bram’s grip tightened on the rail, his eyes fixed on the space where she had been.
Nothing.
The open sky below the terrace was still and unhurried, indifferent to what had just happened.
Then her glow appeared.
Rising slowly back up to the level of the terrace, warm gold threaded through with green-gold, brighter than anyone had seen it. Her hair streamed copper behind her, her arms spread slightly at her sides, and she rose until she was eye level with the railing.
Eye level with Bram’s outstretched hand.
She looked at it.
Then at him.
Her hazel-green eyes were bright with something that had no name yet because nothing like it had happened before.
“We can fly,” she said.
On her shoulder, Pip spread his wings, thin and amber-gold, light passing through them like flame through parchment, and let out a long triumphant croon that rang across every terrace and bridge in the court.
It was that sound that broke them.
Every star on every level moved at once, leaping from railings, bridges, and overlooks, laughing and whooping as they went, the court erupting into the open sky in a single glorious moment.
Meanwhile, Bram withdrew his outstretched hand, clutched the railing with both, and lowered himself into a squat beside it before resting his forehead against it with a quiet, but definitive thud.