Star Daughter

She was nothing but the words of a story, one tale weaving imperceptibly into the next. She was the loom that wove the tapestry. She was the tapestry that joined all things.

People had to grow on their own, make their own decisions, good and bad. It was those mistakes and the choice or refusal to learn from them that gave life—and art—their texture, their meaning. It had to be a choice.

time is the trickster that changes all things,

What did she want? Adventures. Cupcakes and kulfi. To be star bright and mortal dark and make her own choices, too. To not be bound by other people’s expectations. More than anything, to be seen.

Sheetal glanced at her reflection one more time. The silver-tressed, brown-skinned girl before her stared back, powerful. Soft and sturdy as spider silk. Mistress of herself. A hint of starry fire smoldered in her eyes like a signal.

It was funny, the way things changed. How people could be shocked by something, a bit of information that didn't fit what they knew of the world, and then expand and grow around it, into it, until it became part of them, just another piece in an overarching narrative.

It was like wearing the night sky, if the sky were gems and sparkle and all the incandescent promise of the myriad constellations.

Seizing power is one thing, and holding it is quite another,” she said. “It is like trying to grasp water or sand; eventually it spills through the cracks and into the hands of those keen to catch it.

You want to understand humans? That is what makes us—and art—what we are. That choice to keep getting back up and trying again in the face of suffering and injustice and despair.

Except for a few handfuls of dreamers here and there, mortals had built themselves a new fantasy, a boring one where they already knew everything worth knowing—all empirical evidence and explicitly defined labels. Anything else was foolish superstition and couldn’t possibly exist.

A soft, silvery melody pealed in her ears, stopping her where she stood. She shivered, the seductive tones caressing her spine and making her palms tingle. Her blood heated as something kindled at her core. If light had a voice, this would be it. Starsong.

It wasn’t just that he’d lied, as much as that rankled. But by not telling her the truth, he’d cheated her. She could have had one more person who shared her secret, someone she could’ve been herself with while hiding from the rest of the world.