FOURTH BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES OF FANTASILIA SERIES
𝘈 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭. 𝘈 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘈 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵. 𝘈 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦.
Xanthiene Vivenca, a fairy with a bounty for her soul, is caught between...
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Cirasa held his hand towards the stars, keeping track of the one called Prizare. "It's a lone star that only appears every twelfth of the month until its end," he said as they walked through the vast farms of Calca.
With Lanbridhr a desert, Calca shouldn't even have a farm. Not only was Xanthy proven wrong by having one farm existing, the rows upon rows of orchards and crops seemed to prove her wrong a thousand times over.
They had spent the whole afternoon walking through Calca's markets, at least those who stayed at the edge of the Oasis City. Xanthy even got to taste Lanbridhr's delectable liquor that seemed to flush ice down her throat. It was a good way to combat the dry, desert heat.
That trip was enough to drown out her worries and let her forget who she was for a while. She'd give anything to feel that way forever.
As the sun faded and the stars and moons replaced it, Cirasa had spent the past few minutes tracking a star called Prizare after the line in Pelrise's song. "Why is it called the transparent star?" she ran a hand against the back of her neck as she craned it to the sky.
"Hmm?" Cirasa lowered his arm and turned to Xanthy. "Prizare has a habit of disappearing in the middle of its visible time. It gets shadowed by different stars and constellations, but it's still there."
Xanthy pursed her lips. "Why do you think Pelrise chose it as his star?"
"Probably because it's hard to follow," Cirasa looked up again and tapped Xanthy's shoulder. "Look, it's gone now."
Xanthy inclined her head and indeed, amid the mass of twinkling lights and the four moons in the night sky, its glow was nowhere to be found. "Where did it go?"
"It's still there," Cirasa said. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Some stars are just brighter than others that it fades."
Xanthy stuck her bottom lip out, catching sand particles in it. "That's sad." Still, to be overshadowed by others, to vanish out of the sky—what a dream.
"It got us to where we need to go," Cirasa shrugged. "That's the stars' purpose, I think. They guide us to where we have to go, no matter how dim or, in our case, how transparent, they are."
"You know, you could be a mighty poet," Xanthy bumped her shoulder against his.
Cirasa gave her a mocked bow before smoothing his hair off his forehead as he straightened. "I already am.".
"You should let me hear your works sometime," Xanthy chuckled. Amusement felt so foreign to her now. Why was that?
"Yeah, but not now."
Xanthy knitted her eyebrows. "Why not?"
"Because we're here," Cirasa stepped aside to let Xanthy see what's behind him.
Xanthy leveled her gaze at the landscape before her. Tall crops with green stalks and pod-shaped fruits growing in bunches at its tip fell line after line that stretched towards a horizon Xanthy had to squint to see the end. A scraggly line of dark rocks traced the spot where the sky met the earth. What was that?
