Polaris

The Servant's Daughter

"And that one, Polaris, always points North! It's been used by navigators for thousands of years!"

The night was quiet at the Castle of Acorn, save for two hushed voices chattering in guarded fervor. A visitor lingered in the Princess' chamber, which was quite forbidden. High up on the ivory stone tower, the silhouettes of two young children were barely visible through an arching window against the soft glow of candlelight.

Princess Sally Acorn stared up in fascination at the rolling sea of stars out her window as her closest friend Nicole pointed up into the sky. Surrounding the girls sprawled out on the floor were dozens of thick academic tomes; some were neatly stacked into a 'finished' pile, the rest were scattered about, open to random pages. The two girls had snuck them out of the Royal Library that night; they were both far too young to receive permission from Sally's father, the great King Acorn, to peruse the shelves of priceless knowledge, but they had also surpassed what little Sally's tutor could offer.

The textbooks varied on topic, including but not limited to medicine, arithmetic, geology, history, chemistry, and Nicole's personal favorite: astronomy. Following her finger, Sally's eyes rested on the brightest little orb overhead. Sally tilted her head, a skeptical smile on her face.

"So, it's perfectly aligned with Mobius' Northern axis? That seems unlikely."

The lynx perched on Sally's bedroom windowsill grinned as she explained. "Absolutely. The odds of it occurring are quite literally incalculable. It's a pure cosmic coincidence. And even though the axis has shifted quite a bit over the past millennia, it has always corrected itself so that Polaris will always point North. It's as if... as if Mother Nature herself knows the importance of the North Star."

Sally giggled good-naturedly. "You don't believe that nature has an awareness for itself, do you? That sounds a little science-fiction, don't you think?"

"Everything was science-fiction until discovered otherwise," Nicole replied with a casual shrug. "There's still so much that we don't know. Science is merely a tool to uncover the truths of the universe; it's not the truth in and of itself."

"Touche," acknowledged Sally as she considered Nicole's response.

Despite being a year younger than Sally, Nicole was just as sharp. Sally loved having Nicole around to challenge her thinking. It was by happenstance that they had met in the first place. Nicole's mother, one of the many servants in the castle, was forced to bring her daughter along as she performed her duties. Her husband had fallen ill and could no longer watch over Nicole as he worked in the fields outside the castle walls. King Acorn had taken notice of this when he was escorting the Princess to meet her tutor for the first time. Recognizing the servant's long history of diligent work, he offered to allow her daughter to accompany Sally to tutoring.

Nicole was a timid little girl at that time. Neither her nor Sally knew what she was capable of. It took a few days of poring over books and sitting through insufferable, long-winded lectures, but soon Nicole realized that she understood even the most challenging of formulas with utmost clarity. It wasn't until Sally had asked for help on a problem that Nicole really opened up. After a week of barely speaking to each other, Sally had simply slipped a scrap of paper over to Nicole. Curious, Nicole unfurled it while the wheezy old echidna blathered on about the basic elements of physics. She read the words slowly; her grasp on written language was still in development.

Can you help me with the third equation?

Nicole looked over to the chipmunk sitting across from her. She looked straight ahead, sitting up stiffly in her chair. Why, she almost looked... nervous. Nicole hesitated, before using her own charcoal to scribble an answer back.