Starlight (Khale)

The following fictitious events take place in all realities

Death was endless, but it was not the end. After many centuries, Khale had come to realize that there was a rhythm to the afterlife. He had recreated the sheep farm from Paisca and the raised houses from his purgatory. He had a small boat to float at sea. Most of all, he had sheep and Weston’s childhood dog, Ambrose.

The benefit to death was that things were always dying; sheep very quickly. Khale had made a sanctuary for them because most of the sentient dead didn’t have an interest in rearing sheep in death.

Khale would cut their wool, process it the living way, and turn it into blankets, or hats. Most of the items were meaningless except for sentiment. They could be made almost the same through imagination, but year after year customers came back in search of Khale’s realistic blankets, admiring the process.

The currency of death was negotiable. Instead of money, ideas were exchanged. Memories, images, bits of texts. Khale was never picky about what he traded for, not usually, but at this particular juncture he had set up a booth in search of something special.

For as long as he could remember, he’d been searching for someone capable of recreating the night sky over the Aorimaan Islands. He’d begun with a basic search for astronomers and physicists. He’d found accounts of the stars, of the alignments, of where Elesara sat in the cosmos, but again and again they’d failed to capture the sky. None had been to the Aorimaan islands.

They’d often had their own opinions as well. What Khale knew felt wrong, they argued was correct. They’d argued he was dead and didn’t need to see the night sky, to move on. Finally, he’d been led toward a new angle: to find a mathematician. It had led him to host his own booth, with a want ad, in the hopes that someone would help him. Khale waited, and waited. Various passersby came and went, some to see his dog, Ambrose, and some to trade for something homemade.

Then, a man with the most stunning glassy green eyes stopped at the booth and ran his hand across the table. “What do you want math for?”

Khale sat upright. “I’m working on a design project for my home. I have textbooks with information, angles and distances, but I don’t understand it enough to execute it.”

He’d tried, many times.

“You want an architect, then, I think,” the man said.

Khale shook his head and stood. “I’m designing a night sky. The architects I’ve met weren’t able to accomplish the desired effect.” He offered his hand. “I’m Khale, by the way.”

“Astronomer?” The man asked. “Or an astrologist, though I imagine they’d be more interested in certain stars than others.” He took Khale’s hand. “Diego.”

“Have you met an astronomer before?” Khale joked dryly. He’d met enough of them to know their views of the cosmos were too complex for what Khale needed. They weren’t interested in his stories about who the stars once were, what they meant to the Gancanagh and Selkies.

“Fortunately not often.” Diego looked through the various things on the table. “Have you?”

“Several.” Khale realized his eyes had not left Diego’s. They were enchanting in a humble way. Khale’s own eyes were blackened by the Gancanagh curse. He ducked his head a little. “Most seem more interested in debating the history of my realm’s astronomical advancements than in creating anything. Many consider my interpretation of the sky to be primitive and lacking. But I want to see home.”

“So you’re old,” Diego concluded.

Khale didn’t want Diego to think of him as old. The stirrings of loneliness were especially strong with this man who spoke clearly, who had a mind and an ability to hear what Khale said not just interpret it the way he’d learned in life.

“I can help,” Diego offered.

Khale stopped staring at Diego’s stubble and focused on the eyes, though he doubted the change was much better.

“But I don’t promise perfection,” Diego concluded.

“Any help would be appreciated,” Khale said. He began packing his booth up. “I can’t pay with much. Is there anything you’re interested in?”

“A friend?”

Khale melted. “I could use a friend.” He vanished the rest of the booth belongings and took the things in a bag. He offered his hand to Diego. Moving across Death was easiest with touch, though you could move others with concentration. “My place is this way.”

Diego took his hand and sparked.

Khale’s eyes widened. “Fire?” It had been quite a while since he’d met any fairies with fire magic. He moved them to his home, near the door. Ambrose had nudged against him and was now home, ready to frolic among the sheep.

“Yes,” Diego said. “What about you? I’ve always wondered if the Gancanagh get water magic or just the curse.”

“Just the curse, unfortunately.” If a Selkie was born male, they were either magicless, and essentially human, or they were a Gancanagh and cursed. The Selkies had all but bred the Gancanaghs out of existence and exiled them to an island to live out their days together, in solitude, with minimal food.

“I once travelled with a luck fairy,” Khale mused. Weston had been the light of Khale’s life. His only son. Even the consuming love he felt for Konrad could not combat the darkness of the stilts. Weston had freed them from that life, from their imprisonment and starvation. Even if he had predicted Khale’s death, he had worked to prolong his life, to avoid the deaths that kept befalling Khale’s life path.

“I’m not sure I could handle always knowing the future like that,” Diego said.

He hadn’t yet looked at the books or maps, but Khale found himself more interested in the conversation than the work itself, at least for the moment. Khale sat in one of his arm chairs he’d traded. They were luxurious and unlike anything he’d experienced in life. Diego joined him at another.

“The stargazers you complain about,” Diego continued. “All at least have in common that they’re consistently wrong.”

Khale laughed. “He never quite knew the future. He could guess and was decent at guessing, at sorting out things. He kept thinking I would die and eventually he was right, but eventually everyone would be right with that sort of prediction.”

“Eventually.” Diego caught his eyes. Khale knew, as a fact, he had the most exquisite eyes in the room because of the curse. The black base was freckled with opalescent flecks of rainbow. However, he could not help but admire Diego’s for at least the fourth time since they’d met.

“I’ve always heard that Death equalizes us,” Diego said. “But there are so many ways to die — chances to say goodbye, painful or medicated, etcetera, that I don’t believe that. And it certainly isn’t equal after death.”

“So you’ve noticed?” Khale wanted to show him all the wonders of Death that most had not explored. There were the endless children that Khale occasionally adopted a few of and raised through the base stages of growth. He’d traded for quite a few books on child development to achieve some sort of semblance of normalcy, though nothing in Death was quite normal. The sheep were his crown achievement: All of them had once been alive.

“I’ve noticed a great divide,” Diego commented.

Khale sighed. “Yes.” He reached for the coffee table, where he had the closest sketch. He showed it to Diego. “This is what I wish for.” He had stacks of books to reference the various constellations he could recall. Ambrose had taught Konrad, and Konrad had talked about the stories of the stars often. Which stars Khale had missed, he could reference the various texts. Some had dates related to when those stars stopped being seen (because the sky Khale knew was much older than the sky most others knew), it also helped create different angles in relation to other stars. There were also the stars that had not shown up yet, thousands of years before. Khale had tried to his best to follow the inkling of which belonged and didn’t, but it was endlessly frustrating.

Still, he had all of death to accomplish the task.

“You want the night,” Diego commented.

“The Elesarian night, thousands of years go, but I can never remember all of the stars. I’ve been collecting information, relationships between stars, completing constellations I could not remember all the components of…”

“I can do this,” Diego said with confidence. “Do you have a book on luminosity and red and blue shift?”

Khale was in awe. It was rare to find the exact right person at a booth. In all of his years, he’d never met someone like Diego and he’d met many individuals.

“Yes,” Khale said. He got up and retrieved the books that Diego required.

“This will be fun,” Diego said. Though it was Death, Diego allowed himself to spark in a way that may have been natural in life. Or perhaps he was too youngly deceased to have stopped at all.

“I’m glad I met you,” Khale said. “Will you let me see how you do it?”

“Please. This can forge our friendship.” Diego was reading the pages between words, his mind fixated on a project that he might have needed as much as Khale wanted the sky completed.

“Perhaps you could move here,” Khale suggested. “Merge what we knew into something greater than this simple sheep farm.”

“Yeah?” Diego looked at him above the rim of the book, his eyes delighted with fire. “I haven’t established my own housing yet.”

“Was today your first time at the market?”

“Yes. I made the mistake of travelling to a fire kingdom to see if anyone there needed a math tutor recently…”

Khale put his hand on Diego’s. Surprisingly, or perhaps with all the satisfied hope imaginable, Diego did not move his.

“But you have math?” Khale’s skin prickled with a blush he hadn’t felt in a long time, “Fire. You have fire?”

Diego laughed. “Both. Maelchor himself taught me math. He warned me not to travel to the Lower Dell, but I didn’t believe it could be as bad as it was. So here I am.”

“Was it a painful death?” Khale asked. His own had been dreadful, but the memories were long faded.

“Probably typical? I didn’t suffer, but I was ready to be dead when I arrived here. What about yours?”

“I was convicted for impregnating the crown princess of Paisca, because of the curse. It wasn’t a pleasant death, but it’s behind me.”

“As is mine.” Diego put his other hand on Khale’s. “So. Is there life after death?”

“As much as there is light in the darkness.” Khale did something he had told so many before off for: he looked up at the sky he had created so far, the dome that was neither ceiling nor sky, and created a new twinkling star that had never existed, in the tapestry of the nightscape that was home.