[PQ - in progress] so live a life you will remember

[Islay]

Mama is always wandering and Papa is always tugging on starlight.

I don't mind. I love both my parents for the things they love; I feel the draw to both on this moonless night. When my parents move off somewhere along, I make sure my older brother is sleeping and that anybody nearby is as well. If there is any doubt that they are awake, I use just a dash of my Magic to make sure they are no longer. (It always comes out as a brief flash of twinkling, dazzling light; quick like a falling star, sparkling like it it was made up of stardust and moonbeams.)

It is no easy thing to find my way to the sandbar that will lead me to the shore so I create company for myself. Galaxies hang around my pale blue form and the light that radiates from them guides my way. There are whole worlds dancing around my refined face and it keeps me illuminated through the dark hours that I wander away from Islandres and my family.

I don't mind.
I spend hours dancing in the dark - happy to mingle with my shadows, happy to chase my stars, happy to manifest my own small moon in the absence of the real one. My joy in these things leaves me oblivious to way that night (or the dark) could be something to be afraid of. I only know it as a companion, as a friend, as something that is so full of mysteries and wonders that I will never be left alone. For each world I can craft, for each star I can hang and each moon I can cultivate, there is always another and this concept of infinity is so dazzling to me that I keep reaching and tugging and playing with Magic without realizing the enormity of it yet. While I am still young, this gift I share with my father serves as a playmate and companion.

But the crashing waves fade into the oblivion I so love without me realizing it.
The land changes, different from black beaches of Paradise that I am familiar with. When the dim light of day emerges and my powers start to wane with the sunrise, I know I am far from home. Will Mama be mad? I worry. Will Papa be upset? My mind races away from me in a million different directions and so with it do the last of my stars and universes. Sunlight emerges as golden tendrils breaking through the bare branches above my head and I wonder why the dark couldn't stay. In a moment of youthful irritation, I wonder why the sun had to come up at all.

But it reveals something my beloved night could not.
There before me stands a Mountain.

Something sends a shiver up my spine. The sensation isn't unlike the one that my Magic leaves with me (or at least the first few times I had come to know it). Staggering up stones, I start to climb because maybe if I climb this peak before more, I could see my home. If I climb enough, maybe I could see the island I left behind and know my way home. (And there is a part of me that wonders if being so close to the stars might feel wonderful. Like it feels when they cluster close around me before I fall asleep.) I don't make it up all the way - the trek is slippery and freezing cold, something that I not used to.


"Please," I whisper, wondering if my imaginary moon might come back. I look up at the peak and then above it, towards a blazing blue sky that looks far warmer than this lonely ledge. I can't reach that sky, though. There are no shadows, no moons, or galaxies. Not yet, anyway. "Do the clouds get cold? Is it warmer so close to the sun?" My innocent question comes out in a plume of silver smoke as I peer back down to where Beqanna wait, another attempt to spy my home. "If they don't, I think I'd like to be like them."

Islay would like to quest for sky-color changing!