Azrael chuckled at the question, a twinkle in his eye as he nods in agreement with the child. “You’re not the first to ask such things, for as long as there have been stars in the sky, there have been those who questioned why.” His gaze tilts skyward, as if praying to the heavens, before continuing. “She is right, about our ancestors. Where I come from, they teach us that when we die, our spirits become stars. They shine down to those we have left behind, guiding them and watching them… so we’re never alone.” Azrael didn’t know if it was true, but the romanticism of it was enough that he wanted it to be so.
“But those… those aren’t stars… at least not the same type. They are called metors.” The astral bodies were a complicated concept, one which had many stories and legends behind them. Rather than considering them a simple product of friction, he liked to muse over the possibilities. “Some say that shooting stars are the gods prying open the cosmos to peer down at us. That’s why we wish… for if the gods are looking down on us, they are certainly more likely to hear us.
Or maybe, they are an omen of something to come.” Something dark, he mused… but Azrael did not share this with the child. It simply wasn’t necessary to worry her, particularly on a night which ws meant for fun and celebration. “When the stars turn and shift in ways like this, I find it’s always the start of something different.”
Azrael wasn’t a fortune teller, so he doesn’t elaborate further on what that something might entail, leaving it up to imagination. Instead, he turns to the bonfires once more, watching the celebration with a lightness to his carriage. It wasn’t often that the shed star saw fit to relax, though these days he was finding more and more opportunity to let go and embrace what might come. For life was more interesting, he found, when moments were spontaneous.
“What do you think?” Azrael turns to Maeve and her companion, curious to know what her curious mind might think of the information. For perhaps the child could make sense of the lore – he found that often, children were more perceptive and open to the possibility of something strange and wonderfully impossible. It was simply the way they were built, all trust and fairy dust… and he, for one, wanted to learn from their insights and see the world through their innocence and wonder.
@Maeve
