It was on one of the rare spherical stars that she met her lady-love.
Most stars in Cassiopeia’s universe were annulus-shaped, like wedding rings. Like the ring she would have given her Satheen. But not this one. This one was round, circular, like life and death. Like the coins Cassiopeia treasured more than love.
With Satheen by her side, Cassiopeia spoke in poetry. She was an artist so long as she lived.
When Satheen died, that was when the words began to die.
But she understood she didn’t need love.
She remembered that her lord had loved once, and lost.
“You soothed me with your hands.”
Those same hands she uses to strike herself.
“You soothed me with your embrace.”
Now when she holds someone tight, it’s to break their back.
“You loved me with your thoughts.”
Most of those thoughts are daggers against her heart. Placed on purpose.
“You loved me with your charity.”
Her lover would have lived if she had not been away chasing money.
“You loved me with your voice.”
Now a whisper, if the words come at all.
All gone now, swept away like a dream, a thing that never was, faces lost upon waking.
It was on a spherical star she met Satheen, and she was amazed by the perfection of the roundness.
“Stars without hearts are doomed to draw in that which orbits them,” Satheen explained. “And while orbits decay for round stars too, they last longer. They have more time than the stars of our worlds in which to produce new life.”
She would give anything now to make life with her.
The star is dust, ravaged by the beasts. Not even the memory remains.
“It is all for the best,” she says again. “Lord Adonis, too, he loved and he lost.”
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