Nooma

In the high sanctuaries of the Eternal Sky, where only wind and starlight dwelled, I existed before time measured itself. The creatures of Merenthys called me Nooma, goddess of the wind, love, beauty, and stars—but names have never mattered to me. I was only what the wind whispered, what hearts swore, what eyes beheld in awe when they looked to the heavens above.

Some nights I manifested as a cool breeze threading through forests, carrying the scent of pine to tired wanderers. Other nights, I was the warm caress across a lover’s cheek when words no longer sufficed. And always, when darkness blanketed the land, I shone as Aelah, the Bright Star, so brilliant even condemned men with bloodied hands could not turn their gaze away.

I

It was the night of Eryndor Fell’s end, and the drums beat low in the distant town of Mossward. He had been a poacher, once, then a thief, then something much darker—though none of the living seemed to agree on what darkness, exactly, he bore. Men judged him in broken whispers, but I saw into hearts where truth lay hidden. I was the breeze raking through his straw-cushioned prison, threading between stone bars to brush his bowed head. 

Even now, he muttered to no one. “Let me see her, just once,” he rasped. His voice was papery, almost wistful. Condemned men never believed in the promise they’d beheld me until I was unveiled before them.

By tradition, the mortal wardens came. Keys jangled in their fists like hollow laughter. The guards pulled the old man to his feet, bones creaking like dry reeds. Silently, they led him outside.

On a hill near the gallows, the world held its breath. Eryndor swayed as the hood was lowered from his head. No blade, no rope, no fire yet—but his punishment came the way all men hoped it would come: in light.

The wardens turned him northward, toward the empty sky. And I descended—so gently at first, that only the trees knew.

From the infinite dark, I became Aelah.

My light pierced the gloom, and the night glimmered in shifting blue and silver. Against the shadows of his failures and bitter years, I made myself known.

Eryndor Fell, the wind whispered his name. His breathing hitched. 

Men called me beauty, but to behold me was not beauty as mortals described it—it was truth. My radiance poured out in waves too vast for men’s souls. All their love, fear, and longing came spilling forth like cracks bursting into shattered glass. Mortals were never whole again once they’d looked at me. And so they begged for it.

Eryndor looked upon me now—broken, wicked, forgotten—and he wept.

II

The Eternal Stables dwelled between worlds: the living earth below and the heavens above. Its halls were vast, far beyond the reckoning of human sight. Whitewashed beams gleamed in perpetual morning light. The winds that once roamed as horses found their peace here after their final breath. Outside their stalls stretched the Green Beyond—a meadow unspoiled and ever ripe for galloping spirits. Here, they lived free from spurs and bridles, finding their true calling. The gentle breeze swayed ever-restless through fields of soft gold and kissed skies of unbroken blue. 

Here were my servants—bound to no mortal master now, only to the sky.

I walked the cobbled paths. My gown flowed like mist behind me, its hem glistening with constellations. At my passing, I heard hooves rapping gently against polished wood.

“Mistral,” I greeted one of my oldest. The great black stallion raised his silvered head, mane spilling like liquid dusk. Once, long ago, Mistral had ridden beside heroes.

“To the night sky?” he murmured.

“A new soul comes,” I said softly. “Ready a host.”

No servant balked at my request; to them, ferrying souls to the heavens was joy. Mistral strode from his stall, his frame gathering shadows and fragments of air into himself, for this was what my winds were made of—moments that passed through mortal hands unnoticed. Each breath they took, they borrowed from me. They never understood how many winds they breathed in their final sigh.

I stepped from the stable’s edge into the boundless dark, the border where my winds carried the light of eternity on their backs. They followed in long streams of shadow and silver mist, gathering like coursers on an unseen path.

III

The souls of lovers rose to meet me first as whispers. Words left unsaid or unremembered fluttered like dust motes, carried on wind, and reformed into shapes of tender longing. Their faces, borne from my luminescence, softened into joy as I bore them upward.

There is a great love of love in the mortal world. Men live and perish for it; some speak of it as the fire that consumes, others as the pool that quenches thirst. I am that fire. I am that pool.

Once mortal hearts breathe their last and the eyes of their beloveds have run dry of tears, I gather them.

“They belong to the heavens,” mortals often said, pointing to the stars above—and they did not know how right they were.

It was not magic that made them so, nor law. It was love itself, which cannot die but lingers as a light refusing to surrender to the void.

And so I welcomed Eryndor Fell when his second dawn came—not into shadowed forgetfulness as he had feared, but into my arms.

The wind carried the first call of a stallion echoing across the heavens.

“Look,” I murmured gently.

The thief lifted his gaze and, for the first time, wept not for himself. Above him, fields unfurled—not of earth or sky, but something vaster. The night unveiled her tapestry, embroidered with a thousand thousand stars. Here, lovers weaved themselves among the heavens.

“No one will remember me,” he whispered. But Eryndor looked at his hands and found they no longer trembled. They shimmered instead—ghostly, endless. They’d shed the brittle weight of mortality.

“Oh, they will,” I corrected him. “Whenever they look up.”

IV

The horses-turned-winds scattered across the vault of sky, pulling their mist-light cargo—the spirits—like phantom charioteers. They galloped and twined themselves through my light, stitching endless paths the living could trace.

Some worshipped me as a goddess of mercy, though they were wrong. Others feared me, thinking I feasted on tears. They were wrong, too.

I exist simply as what is.

It is only tradition—this ceremony for the condemned—that teaches men who and what they are before they fall into their fate. As I rise to shine at their lowest point, truth rises with me. Beneath that truth, anger loosens, hands unclench, fear dissolves like frost.

As the souls of lovers ascended that night, taking their places in the eternal waltz of stars, I felt the eyes of another condemned man—far across Merenthys—lift skyward, searching for his glimpse of me. Somewhere in that broken city beyond mountains and rivers, hearts were folding and fists unclosing once again.

This cycle would not end, nor did I wish it to. For who else among mortals deserves the stars if not those who have been forgotten?

V

I am, to Merenthys, the inevitable. They dress me in words like “love,” “beauty,” and “forgiveness,” but those are mortal ideals—limited and fleeting. I am not fleeting. I am neither first breath nor last; I am every breath. I do not choose who ascends. I only offer.

Perhaps that is why condemned men, all their hopes smothered in finality, look at me and finally understand: all their mistakes, wars, lovers lost, hands that built or destroyed, had been written across my vault all along. My starlight etched it silently, even as they slept and their names were whispered no longer. They were not forgotten; they had become light.

Their souls—and the souls of their beloveds—made up the very sky the living called heaven.

And every morning when the dawn rose in that world below, snuffing the stars like so many candles, they had already found peace.

So I shone.