Page 7 of Starlit Bargains

The forest welcomed him, or at least did not reject him outright. Ancient oaks and towering pines created a cathedral of living wood, their branches intertwining overhead to filter the fading sunlight into dappled patterns. The path beneath his feet was barely visible, more suggestion than reality, but Eliar followed it unerringly.

He had walked this way countless times over the centuries, always when the burden of his existence became too heavy to bear alone. The elders did not offer comfort, exactly—comfort was a human concept, and they were far from human—but they offered perspective, the long view that spanned millennia rather than moments.

The stone circle appeared suddenly, as it always did. One moment Eliar was walking among trees, the next he stood at the edge of a perfect clearing where seven massive standing stones formed a circle around a pool of water so still it might have beenglass. The stones were rough-hewn and weathered, covered in lichen and moss, carved with symbols no living human could read.

Eliar paused at the threshold, a habit born of respect rather than necessity. The circles had never rejected him, even after his fall. Perhaps because they, too, were relics of a forgotten age, remnants of something greater now reduced to whispered myths.

“I seek counsel,” he said softly, his voice barely disturbing the silence.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The clearing remained still, the pool unruffled, the stones impassive.

Then, slowly, the air began to change. It thickened, becoming almost syrupy, heavy with the scent of loam and lightning. The surface of the pool shimmered, not with ripples but with an inner light that pulsed like a heartbeat.

Eliar stepped into the circle, feeling the familiar sensation of crossing a threshold into a place that existed sideways to the normal world. The sounds of the forest faded, replaced by a deep, resonant hum that seemed to come from the stones themselves.

“You return, Fallen One.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, neither male nor female but with an ancient, tree-like quality. “After so long away.”

“Necessity, not choice,” Eliar replied, moving to the edge of the pool. “Something is happening in the village. Something I cannot ignore.”

“Yes.” The word rippled across the water's surface. “We have felt it. The stirring. The remembering.”

Eliar's reflection in the pool shifted, showing not his current face but something older, brighter—a version of himself with eyes that blazed with inner light and hair that moved as if in a celestial wind. He looked away quickly.

“There is a stranger in Mistwood,” he said. “A witch from Thornhaven, though he claims he is not. His magic... it disturbs things. Wakes things.”

“Not his magic alone,” another voice interjected, this one higher, with a whistling quality like wind through hollow reeds. “But the conjunction of his power with what already slumbers here. With what sleeps within you, Star-Fallen.”

Eliar flinched at the old name. “Nothing sleeps within me. What I was is gone. Burned away when I fell.”

A sound like laughter rustled through the clearing, though there was no mirth in it. “Is that what you have told yourself these long years? That your essence could be so easily destroyed?”

“I have no power,” Eliar insisted, an edge creeping into his voice. “No purpose. No connection to what I once was.”

“And yet,” came a third voice, deep and gravelly, like stones grinding together, “you still watch. You still protect. You still intervene when danger threatens the innocent. As you did today with the witch.”

“Habit, nothing more,” Eliar said, but the words sounded hollow even to his own ears.

The pool's surface rippled suddenly, the water rising up in a column that twisted and shaped itself into a form Eliar recognized immediately—a perfect replica of Kai, rendered in living water, down to the mischievous spark in his eyes and the sprite perched on his shoulder.

“This one carries old magic,” the first voice said. “Something that remembers when the stars walked among men.”

Eliar stared at the water-image, unable to look away. “He's dangerous, then. A threat to the balance I've maintained here.”

“Perhaps.” The water-Kai smiled, the expression so like the real thing that Eliar felt an unexpected pang in his chest. “Or perhaps he is the catalyst needed to restore what was broken.”

“I want no restoration,” Eliar said sharply. “I have built a life here. A quiet existence where I harm none and none disturb me. I want no part in celestial games again.”

The water-Kai dissolved, the liquid flowing back into the pool with a gentle splash. For a moment, all was silent in the clearing, as if the elders were conferring among themselves.

Then, without warning, the largest of the standing stones began to change. The rough granite surface seemed to soften, the patterns of moss and lichen shifting to form a face—ancient, wise, with eyes like deep wells and a mouth like the gnarled roots of a tree. This was Elder Willow, the oldest and most powerful of the circle's guardians.

“Child of stars,” the stone face said, its voice like the creaking of ancient branches, “you have hidden yourself away for centuries, believing your fall was punishment, your isolation deserved.”

“It was,” Eliar said, the old bitterness rising in his throat. “I failed in my duty. I questioned what should not be questioned. I looked upon humanity and saw not the flaws I was meant to judge, but the beauty I was forbidden to love.”

“And for this, you believe you were cast out?” Elder Willow's stone eyes seemed to see through him, past the facade he had constructed over centuries to the wounded core beneath. “Perhaps your fall was not punishment, but opportunity. Perhaps what you call exile, the universe calls growth.”

Eliar shook his head, unwilling to allow hope to take root. Hope was painful. Hope could destroy him more thoroughly than his fall ever had.

---