Ad Astra

The sky was a perfect shade of oblivion. Petra lay on her back inside the rowboat, using a canvas satchel as a pillow against the wooden boards. The inky cobalt waves lapped against the frame, gently rocking the vessel like a hammock. Petra only stared at the sky. 

It wasn’t fully dark yet, so the cloudless dome looked like a big blue sheet, tinted only with a distant pale yellow behind Petra’s head. A few pinpricks of white light dusted the sky like freckles. Petra gazed wordlessly into the blue void, daring the other stars to step forth. Petra may have hoped to see more of the lights, but they weren’t who she was waiting for.

A different kind of white figure buzzed in front of her face with an inhuman chirp of a greeting. The fairy hovered with pointed gossamer wings, and a whispering, dress-like garment that gave her the appearance of a tiny ghost. 

“Ah! There you are!” Petra exclaimed. “Where were you?”

The tooth fairy flashed her an impish grin and proudly showed her an inhuman canine. The pearly tooth was flecked with rusty blood. 

“I see,” Petra commented, eyeing the reddish stains. “Tell me,” She said. “How exactly did you collect this one?”

The fairy stuck out her tongue indignantly and hid away the tooth for later admiration.

“Alright, you keep your secrets so long as I keep all my teeth by next morning.” She said, reaching to untie the rowboat from the dock.

The tooth fairy fluttered into one of the numerous pockets in Petra’s coat and folded herself down like a piece of fleshy paper. Petra pushed off from the shore and began steering the vessel towards an island a little way off from the mainland.

The island was of similar terrain to the rest of the land. It had coarse rocky beaches with black boulders that were hammered by the constant waves. It was mostly populated by long grasses, but could boast the occasional wildflower if the season was right. 

What made the island noticeable was the hulking remains of what looked like a castle from a children’s book. Nesting seabirds could sometimes be spotted in the rocky crannies, but they tended to stick to the foreboding cliffs that loomed over the ocean farther north-east.

It took Petra a lot of effort to wrestle the rolling waves into letting her get to her destination. The currents tugged and pulled with more violence than usual. In the end Petra had been thoroughly sprayed with a healthy dusting of saltwater and fatigue. 

She docked the boat in a location with a minimal amount of jagged boulders, and dragged her canvas satchel over her shoulder as the ivory fairy flew up the incline of the hill.

Petra climbed past the rockier part of the slope and flopped down onto her back. Petra crushed a number of the long wild grasses, but she knew they had a tendency to spring back up again. Her heart was still racing with adrenaline as she inhaled the deep evening air. 

“That,” She breathed, “was harder than I remember.” She sat up with a grunt. “Note to self: get a headstart on the tide next time.”

She pushed herself back up to a standing position, and spotted the tooth fairy flirting over the top of the hissing grass stalks. Petra made her way towards the ruined castle.

If the place was scary to most, it didn’t seem to faze her. Her tiny white companion flew to her side and hovered around her like an orbiting moon. Petra walked through the stone structure, her booted feet moving with practiced quiet. The cobbled ground was cracked and uneven, with gnarled roots and persistent grasses displacing the once-perfect stone work.

Cold, salty breezes groaned through the broken walls as she continued her stroll through the skeletal building. Petra came to a stop before the lip of a balcony that had once made up the second floor. The space was occupied by an ominous dark form that watched the sky from a gap in the ceiling. 

In a sense the island was haunted, but by a living creature instead of a ghost. Petra loved to visit the place, but she wasn’t the visitor that gave the place an unnerving reputation.

“Hey, Erebos!” She called out.

The large figure made little movement to acknowledge her entrance. “Petra.” Erebos observed stonily.

“Pretty clear evening, huh? Not too many clouds in the way this time.” She commented. 

Erebos said nothing. Instead, a dark chain unfurled from his perch, not quite managing to reach the cobbled ground. It was as much of an invitation as she was going to get, and the only kind that she needed.

It took a little longer than normal for Petra to scale the chain with her aching limbs. The fairy wasn't pleased with the delay, but still hovered around the girl’s head instead of flying to the top herself. With a grunt Petra rolled over the lip and spilled into the makeshift nest.

It was a large round creation made up of stolen sheets and other moderately soft things. Rectangular beds didn’t accommodate Erebos’ wings. Like the other of his kind, the big, hawkish limbs protruded from midway down his back, but unlike most Asters, Erebos’ feathers were jet black.

The giant Aster wore an owlish bird mask, but even behind the shield Petra could tell he was watching her. She grinned at him.

“Good evening. You remember Syrinx, right?” She asked, gesturing towards the fairy who was wisely keeping her distance from the dark creature.

“Yes, the fairie.” Erebos murmured. 

“Her name is Syrinx.” Petra reminded him calmly.

Erebos eyed the creature. “It is strange that she willingly follows you. Tooth fairies belong in a hunting pack with the rest of their kind.”

Petra shrugged casually. “Humans are usually social creatures, like fairies. Maybe it's fitting that the two lone wolves ended up traveling with each other.” She reached into her satchel and pulled out a clementine, rolling it between her palms to loosen the skin. “How have you been?” She asked Erebos. 

His shoulders and wings shifted in something resembling a shrug. “I have not seen any of the other fallen Aster. Most have probably been killed by the golden armies and I am likely soon to follow.”

Petra stilled. “Ok, I know you’re pretty morbid on the regular but did I miss something when I was gone?”

“I was attacked by the golden Aster a few times.” He said calmly.

Petra bristled. “Why are you being so calm about this?”

Erebos had no answer. Syrinx watched the faint tension with an odd sense of glee. Petra turned and smiled at her. “You know, there’s usually a number of mouse-like creatures that live on the island. Maybe you’ll find a few skeletons if you look.” Syrinx took the hint and flew back to the shadows. 

Petra began to peel the clementine. “Are you okay?” She asked Erebos.

“I have no issue with this knowledge.”

“What I mean is, did they injure you?” She specified.

“No. This shouldn’t bother you.”

Petra glared up at him. “Why not?”

“What I mean is, this shouldn’t be a problem to you. You are human, why do you find the need to make this an issue of your own?”

Petra tossed her hands in the air in frustration. “I hate that they still boss you around, but then get mad if you try to be nice to them. And not just that, but they keep hunting you! You’re not a part of their system anymore, why can’t they just leave you alone? You’re strong enough to make your own choices instead of working for some high and mighty Lord in the golden cities.”

Erebos watched the stone bricks on the opposite wall. “You know better than most that following orders and dedicating ourselves to someone is part of our nature. It is the main reason Asters were created.”

Petra dropped a piece of the clementine peel on the floor. “Seems to me that the Asters only get pushed around until they get pushed away, then suddenly they become the villains.”

Erebos stared at her coldly. “My banishment was not unjustified. I had committed great wrongs, and exile was the determined punishment.” He said heavily.

Petra peeled away another piece of the orange fruit skin. “Last time you told me a name, or rather I... overheard one. Lumen. That was your name, right? Before.. you fell?”

“Lumen died in the Great Schism. He was an idiodic fool and his choices created Erebos.” He said venomously.

“I’m glad I got to meet him.” Petra whispered after a brief pause.

“You never knew Lumen.”

“I know Erebos. He’s a good friend of mine.”

He shifted minutely. With a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sigh, he returned to watching the emerging stars through the gap in the stonework.

“Aster, in my language, means “star”. That is why we are meant to be golden, to reflect the rays of the sun. When we are banished, we turn black like coal. We are dead stars.”

Petra narrowed her eyes. “I thought that when you fell you only lost your glow, not your color. Asters shine when they have purpose, you lose that when you no longer have someone to serve. You only turn black when you disavow your masters.” She frowned. “Isn’t it better to change your color, to show that you can shine because you serve yourselves?”

“We do not serve ourselves like this,” He said, gesturing to the crumbling home. “Servitude to others is a part of our nature.” He fixed her with his sharp gaze behind his mask. “It is something I would expect you to understand.”

Her fingers stopped picking apart the clementine. “What do you mean?” She asked accusingly.

“Always running around offering help to those who will take it. When have you ever stopped to serve yourself?” He asked mockingly.

“I do.” Petra murmured. “This is how I help myself.”

“By serving others?”

“No, just doing... this. Any of it. Talking to you, stealing teeth with Syrinx, walking around the island. All of it means that I'm here and not in San Francisco.”

“Your home.”

“My home can be wherever I want it to be.” She said defensively.

Erebos sat unmoving as a rock. “The home of a tooth fairy is where their pack lives. The human city is where your pack lives.”

“It's called a family. And where they are is where my name is María and half my family thinks--” Petra stopped, her hands twitching reflexively around the small fruit. “Out here I don’t have to pretend that I only speak human languages. I don’t have to pretend that I’m scared of the dark. Out here that's all normal, like breathing or walking. 

“Out here… Petra becomes normal.” She eyed the pieces of clementine skin that had quickly fallen apart at her feet. “I like being Petra.”

The castle sighed with the wind. When the silence became too heavy she pulled the clementine into halves and offered Erebos one side. He accepted it without a word even though Petra knew he wouldn’t take off his mask to eat it. The evening light had faded quickly, leaving the two sitting in darkness. Erebos’ shadowy complexion had made him practically invisible. 

Syrinx whirred over the lip of the nest like a ghostly hummingbird. It seems she hadn’t come back empty handed. Syrinx made a beeline for Perta’s open hand, where she landed and proceeded to display her spoils proudly. She had located something that looked like a femur, and half of a yellowed jaw. It was probably the most she could carry on her own.

Petra’s smile gleamed like a sliver of moonlight. “I like the jaw piece,” She praised. The tooth fairy’s wings fluttered joyfully as she moved to arranging the collected bones on the nest floor. Erebos stared silently, watching the peculiar fairy dragging her prizes to a human girl for validation. Petra stared back at him.

“Do you want to know something crazy about all that?” She asked suddenly, gesturing wildly to the night sky.

“Tell me.” He said.

“When we look up at those lights, we’re mostly looking at nothing.”

He glanced at her in confusion. “Those are not nothing. Those are stars.”

“Yeah, but they are so far away from us to begin with, and not just that, but the distance between the stars is huge. They look all squished together from where we are, but they’re really billions of light years away from each other, and away from us.” Petra explained with a wild grin. 

“We could be looking at the heart of the milky way and be staring into nothingness. There’s just a huge void up there, big enough that we can never really fathom it. We have numbers and measurements, but numbers aren’t the real deal. It's one thing to say “five miles” and another to go and walk them.”

Petra sighed. “It makes me think that me and my problems are tiny. Struggle isn't always something that can be quantified in the physical world. At the end of the day, all of it is stuck up here,” She said, tapping the side of her head. “And if you think about it, a Something like myself becomes pretty meaningless when it's held up against absolutely Nothing.”

Erebos gazed into the dark sky. “This knowledge makes you happy?” He asked dreamily.

Petra breathed out a laugh. “Honestly? Thinking about it makes me kind of claustrophobic. I prefer to believe that I am something more important than a speck of dust staring into the void and waiting for something to happen. But I still find it fascinating.” She looked over at her friend. ‘The fear of existence is kind of exhilarating.”

From somewhere in the darkness, his voice returned. “Yes,” Erebos replied. “I suppose it is.”