The stars have gone quiet, still.
It has been years now since she last drew them out of the sky, casting the meadow in stark celestial light. She has retreated into herself, Liesma, crawling back into her own ribcage inch by inch, her own light dimming by degrees.

She had given birth to a star burnt out, collapsed, so pitch dark that he was visible even at night. Not only dark but a complete absence of light, her Mutiny. And she had loved him, but he’d brought with him a kind of fear that she could neither digest nor shake. It festered in her gut, the space around her heart, it tightened like a rope around her neck. Worse than the fear was that he had known he was the cause and she had been powerless to convince him otherwise. She could not love him fiercely enough to make him light.

This was the last time she had drawn down the stars, see. She had pulled them down around the boy, let them kiss his skin. She had hoped, so foolishly, that she might inject him with their light. Their light, however, had not even reflected in his eyes.

She has not seen him since. Nor has she called upon the stars.

But she goes to the meadow now and she thinks of him, her son. She misses him with a fierceness that surprises her. And she blames herself for her inability to save him from her own fear. From his own darkness.

She calls them down now, tugs them out of the sky, drapes them across her shoulders. She tells them about her son, Mutiny, she asks them to keep him safe. And then some distant sound sends them scattering, her attention stolen by the disturbance, and she turns to face the interloper.

Her pulse hitches, her breath catching sharply.

“Zo,” she sighs into the quiet.

The great yawning distance between them is not lost on Liesma. The cool greeting such a stark contrast to the way her sister had greeted her the last time their paths had crossed purely by chance. The shadows crouching around the darker sister’s shoulders sparking confusion in the lighter sister. Creatures of the night, the two of them, but this darkness is something different altogether.

The stars Liesma had pulled down around her blink out suddenly when she blinks her own surprise. She feels suddenly tentative, hesitant, and to feel anything other than pure, unadulterated joy in the company of her sister makes her uneasy. Something has shifted, something fundamental.

How have the stars treated her? She feels no urge to tell her sister that she has spent precious little time with them as of late. She feels no urge to explain why. Instead, she takes a careful step toward her, the unease making her limbs hum. Theirs has been a stoic family, certainly, as creatures of the night often are, but this is something altogether different. There has never been any love spared between them.

“Zo, are you all right?” she asks, quiet. It has not occurred to her that she might have done something to upset her sister, why would it? It is so plainly obvious to Liesma that something terrible has happened.