Embers ◂ Poe Dameron

04. 𝐓earing at the seams

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑

The stars will never be as insane as those who search for constellations.

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ARKANIS, 22 ABY

❖━━━━━━⋇ before the siege, part two

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WHEN SHE WAS YOUNG, Maratelle believed that she could explore the universe. From the start the girl knew it was foolish, a dream floating on the guise of the whim within shielded eyes more than the reality of any logic, but there was something about the way the stars looked down upon everything which had ever lived that made her want to reach out and grasp each one in the palm of her hand. She imagined that they would feel warm, comforting against her skin as they reflected their luminous brilliance into every darkness and twisted crevice that had carved its way into her rosy, calloused palms. The origin of life itself was somewhere in those all-knowing embers of the galaxy's flames, she just knew it, and even the slightest glance up into such a mysteriously beautiful realm was more rewarding than any dull philosophy that illuminated the unexceptional foundations of the ground.

Bathed in moondust and encrusted in longing, Maratelle had stared upwards so long that she knew what few others did: that the specks of light which littered the cosmos, like tiny flowers in a field of endless weeds, were not all a bleached ivory as most presumed. When one looked hard enough they would find that each orb was a different color, rusting vermilions, brilliant emeralds, swirling violets, and stunning azures; a sea of dazzling, harlequin jewels sewn across the velvet night sky. It never failed to take her breath away, stealing all other thoughts from her mind as she sighed in a yearning awe that could have made even the most stoic of hearts twinge in compassion. Just like that, the weight of everything would dissolve, for the overarching dome of the sky was one thing that never ceased to oppose gravity's sighing grip.

Curls bouncing freely against the back of her neck, every evening she would race outdoors and watch as the celestial sparks emerged, their poetically arranged patterns and shapes such that no human could understand, yet she tried to anyway. Cool grass brushed against her jaw as she laid back on the softening ground, allowing herself to become delicately laced with settling mist and thinking of the light years that separated her from the dazzling display of flickering pinpricks. They weren't only beautiful, they were haunting; perhaps what kept the young girl coming back to them again and again, for they seemed to be ghosts of another life, massive and fragile above her tiny frame. How many people might be looking at the same stars as me? she would wonder, how many living creatures choose to notice the utter extraordinary which graces the galaxy each night?

There was a certain ignorance that came with growing up under constellations and meteor showers, a vulnerability that went hand in hand with craning one's neck constantly upwards, never quite letting your eyes fall to the hidden dangers of the crystallized ground. For it was the gentle reflection of all those stars, captured in the glistening ebony of her eyes like fireflies in a silken jar, that Brendol Hux had seen when his gaze first fell on Maratelle. How painfully fitting that those very same stars, the only things she ever loved, were what led her to a monster.