☽ Willfur ☾
Only in Darkness
Disappointed, he turns away from the jewelry booth piled high with necklaces and bracelets, baubles and wind chines and other hanging decorations crowded onto pegs that jut from its wooden frame. The craftsman has sea shells and sand dollars, sharks teeth and little bits of seafloor with spiral fossils imprinted in them. They have sea glass, worn smooth and given a frosted finish by the ceaseless waves, but warmly colored sea glass, they say - the reds and oranges and pinks that Willfur most adores, the colors of sunrise and warmth and new beginnings - are apparently exceedingly rare.
He might have settled for a deep, emerald green instead - another color he quite admires, the color of life, of nature - but those too are in short supply, most often dulled to seafoam and teal and lime, the salinity of the water bleaching the dyes and stains to a mere suggestion of what they once were. "Ah, well." He shrugs, moving on. It was nice to have a look at least.
All along the beachfront there are visitors playing, shopping, building sandcastles, and clustered around campfires in pairs and small groups. Willfur would have thought, given the sheer number of horses gathered in one place, that he would feel crowded and overwhelmed by noise pollution, but it's surprisingly peaceful. Between groups there are pockets of quiet, where the shhh-shh of the ocean can assert its dominance over the festivities and the light of the fires gives way to moon and stars.
Alone in one of these pockets, he cocks a leg and watches the night sky overhead. There aren't any constellations he recognizes - Novus must be very far from anywhere he's been before - so he admires the splashes and pinpricks of light without trying to give them names or meaning, just enjoying the splendor of something so much larger than himself.
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Can We See the Stars
