To Slaughter A Lamb

Chapter 3: Written in the Stars

  Many of our first days together were silen, yet at night, something would come over me and dared to speak to the mysterious man who guarded me. That night, as well as many of the following, we slept outside. The stars were particularly bright that evening. Mizu and I couldn't be described as close by any means then, but at this point I'd come to share my musings with him.

"What do you think of the stars?" I asked, scanning the sky for all of the constellations I could remember.

"What about them?" He rarely understood my musings, being a much more practical person than myself.

"I don't know... Like, do you find them pretty, do you care to know where they come from?" I said.

He hummed, studying them carefully. "I hadn't thought about that before." He said before falling silent again.

I sighed, pulling the blanket tighter around myself. I didn't anticipate for him to say anything and prepared to roll over and fall asleep.

"What do you think about the stars?" He asked. Something about that little question made my heart flutter.

"Well," I said, gazing at them longingly. "For one, they're pretty."

"That's it?" there was a little amusement in his tone.

"Hmmm, well my mother spoke of the stars often. She said that they were the homes of bright spirits that once roamed the earth," I told him. "But she said some people in her homeland believed they were spirits themselves. She also heard in her travels that they were the eyes of the deceased, watching over us all."

Mizu hummed in bemusement. "And what do you think they are?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Not sure, I think the stories matter more than what they actually are."

Mizu turned to look at me, resting on his elbow. I turned to look at him as well. His eyes were wider than I'd ever seen, his face softer and more at peace, too.

"Do you have any more stories?" He asked.

I smiled and scooted closer to him so that I could point out three bright stars to him.

"My mother would call that Orion's belt," I told him. "It's said Orion was a great huntsman who was banished to the sky for eternity."

"Why?" Mizu asked.

  I turned onto my side, my hands tucked nearly under my head, and whispered, as though telling him a secret. "He boasted about his kills, trying to impress a goddess. Him, and his dogs were sent to chase animals they could not catch for ever in the stars." I pondered for a moment, then remember one more constellation I wanted to tell him of.

"That one is called the lyra constellation," I said, motioning to the part of the sky in question. "It resembles a stringed instrument. But in China, that star is Niulang, a cow heard who fell in love with the Goddess, Zhinu. There love was forbidden, and in the sky they are separated by a celestial river."

"That's... Unfortunate." Mizu noted.

I looked over to him to notice he had been looking at me, and not the stars I had been speaking of. I curled up and hid my heated face in the covers. My eyes started to feel heavy.

"They meet once a year," I told him, shutting my eyes with a smile. "And share a passionate night together."

For the first time since leaving home I had slept peacefully that night. I dreamt of dancing through the stars as the forbidden lover of a samurai.