To never truly sleep is a tiring thing. Lune drifted though both lives in a drowse.
Lune was not really a queen, in the literal sense of the word. She didn't have a realm; a kingdom. Goddess was closer to the truth, but she didn't have a particular fondness for the title. To understand what she really thought of herself, one only had to read the door of her modest cottage. She'd painted it in a dark, sea-green and written a notice on it in letters the colour of dying sunsets.
Lune, Immortal Being, Mother of the Stars
Respectful Worship and Small Tokens Welcome
Food Items Are Preferred
If No One Is Home, Prayers May Be Left In Letterbox
No Soliciting, Please
Mother Moon, Goddess of the Heavens, Guardian of the Stars, were among the other names she was known by. She was most often called The Lune, or just Lune.
She could spin stars out of nothing, and could name every point of light in the night sky. She could create the most devastatingly beautiful supernovas and walk amongst her creations and did it all as easily as breathing or walking.
It came with the territory.
Stargazers and Wishers all over the realm worshipped her above all the demi-gods that wandered the earth. They carried small statuettes in her likeness and brought gifts so that she might touch their souls and reveal the secrets of the universe. Lune listened to their prayers and touched their foreheads, fingers, lips, in blessing. She never said it, but she was not sure if her blessings actually did anything. She wasn't entirely sure that she had the power to pass on the magic of the stars.
She was very young for what she was. Immortal, but closer to the beginning of her existence than most. Before her there was nothing, until she created the stars, her children, to shine down and keep watch over the earth.
In her other life, however, she was much the same, but no one worshiped her.
Lune woke from one world to another, rousing herself lightly from her drowse and lifted her form off the cot. The Market at Wall was entirely unremarkable from the many other markets that populated the land of Stormhold. She shuffled about the carriage rummaging around for her clothes. Once she had found each individual item of her outfit and had pulled them on, she exited her sleeping quarters to face yet another day…
Or night. It was one of the problems with falling asleep in one world and awaking in another. You never knew what time of day it was.
Lune walked into the market towards her booth. Various chatter swelled around her as she made her way through throngs of different people. Eventually she caught sight of her booth a few meters away from the pub The Slaughtered Prince. Lune liked the location. Selling trinkets and little odd items didn't fare well when dealing with patrons who were sober. She had learned long ago that the fastest way to make herself some coin was to lure a drunkard over with remarkably embellished stories and pawn the trinkets which she had featured in her tales, sending the poor fellow home with worthless items and a very light coin purse.
It wasn't an honest living, but she was a Goddess, not a Saint.
"Mother Moon?" a raspy voice said in her ear, making her jump.
She spun around to face the speaker. "You know who I am?" she demanded.
"I know much about you. But there is no time to exchange pleasantries. I come bearing ill news."
"Who are you?" Lune asked again. Thousands of years spent drifting through two lives had taught her to be cautious.
But the stranger only blinked, and a single red tear slid down its cheek, following the deep grooves of a large scar. "Violence, death, despair, your child will".
Lune's face paled. In her mind's eye, faces of her lost children swam in a hazy fog: Mersina, Eirini, Youla, Anastasia, and countless other stars which had fallen from the heavens and ceased to live by the blade of a wicked knife.
"It's not possible," Lune whispered, disbelief coursing through every fiber of her being. She knew that her heart couldn't take the sorrow of losing another. "A star hasn't fallen in eighty years," she finished, resolutely.
"The passage of time is meaningless," the stranger replied, tiny green eyes staring at Lune intently. "Eighty minutes, eighty years, time's only one's interpretation." Terribly wrinkled hands, gnarled and twisted, reached out and encased Lune's ivory ones. "The star is here."
"Here?" An uneasy feeling was slowly tightening its grip on her stomach, as she turned her head back and forth surveying the market crowd. Faces stared back at her, some acknowledging her with a nod, some ignoring her completely. She could be anywhere.
The stranger continued. "Encased in walls of ivory upon a citadel a mile high. She continues to shine, the brightest entity in all of Stormhold. Love continues to burn in her core, but it is all for naught. She is heading into uncertainty and peril."
Lune blinked as the realization dawned on her. "Y-yvaine?" The Queen of Stormhold; her daughter. Her heart plummeted farther than it had before. "But Tristian…"
"Will never let any harm befall her, it is true," the stranger replied, cutting her off, "but I fear that his love for her is about to be undone."
Being neither alive nor dead, Lune had received more despairing news than she cared to remember over her lifetime. "Without true love, Yvaine will die," she whispered.
"That is not her only obstacle. You know of the land beyond the Weeping Wall of Stormhold?"
Lune's blood ran cold. "No. She can't go there; everybody knows what happens when you cross the Weeping Wall!"
"And yet she will. And so will Tristan; together."
This brought little comfort. "If they cross the wall together, the history of their love and lives will be erased! They'll know each other by name, but nothing else. No feelings, no love… no… anything. They'll be back at the beginning."
"Don't quote the workings of the land beyond the wall," the hooded figure snapped. "The runes never lie. Fate or destiny, whatever you choose to call it, has Yvaine and Tristan leaving this world behind, for the one beyond."
"Is there anything I can do to prevent this?" Lune asked, more to herself than to the stranger who was telling her that one of her children and her husband (whom she also cared deeply for), were going to cross into the land beyond the wall.
"You know your obligations," the robed-figure interrupted, as if it knew the battle that was raging inside of her. "As Mother Moon you are to create and observe. Not to interfere in the affairs of mortals."
"But Yvaine isn't mortal," Lune interjected. "She's a sta-"
"It matters not," the figure said with a dismissive wave. "She is now part of the mortal realm, and by your creed you are bound to your duties."
"How do you know so much?"
"It is my job to know, Goddess; and I am excellent at what I do. I know many things, things I would sooner forget than remember. Like the real reason you are troubled over this news."
There was a terrible silence as Lune contemplated her options.
"What is it you think you know?"
The figure smiled a knowing smile which made her uneasy. "I know that as long as Yvaine remains within the mortal realm, the two of you are intrinsically connected." The figure reached out and poked a finger at her chest. "You put a piece of your soul into every star you create. However, the longer a star remains within the human realm, the stronger the connection between you both grows." The figure removed her hand and it deftly vanished beneath black robes. "If Yvaine dies in the land beyond the wall, you, Mother Moon, will perish as well." The hand reappeared from the robes and a gnarled finger made a smooth slicing motion across the strangers' neck. "The connection between the two of you is eighty-years-old. Her doom will also be yours."
Lune was visibly shaking. She had known of this, but had always regarded with a form of what she could only call detachment. But hearing her deepest secrets put so bluntly by someone she had never met had unnerved her. She grabbed the corner of her booth to prevent her legs from giving out.
"Who are you?" she whispered again, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.
The figure did not answer. Instead, the stranger lent over her booth and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Lune put a hand up to the spot where she had been kissed and watched through tear-streaked eyes as the stranger backed into a throng of people and disappeared.
When Lune woke the following morning in the other world, she found a young traveler snoring on her doorstep. He was very shabbily dressed and covered in the dust of the road, and when she shook him awake, she scrambled as if in fear of being mugged. It only took him a moment to remember where he was, though, and he fumbled with his pack in search of the offering he'd brought.
"Great and Wonder Lady of the Stars," he said, pulling out a wedge of something brown, "please bless my telescope."
"Funny looking telescope," Lune replied, distracted still by what the stranger had told her in the marketplace.
"I… er… this is my telescope," he said, shifting the load on his back to reveal an old, oft repaired little telescope. Lune reached down and touched it.
This was enough. He began to thank her profusely, but she was in no mood to accept his thanks. She needed solitude with her thoughts, away from this insipid little man.
"Would you fetch my mail?" she asked.
"Yes, of course, anything for you," he said, bowing as he backed up towards the mailbox. He returned and Lune waved a dismissive hand at him signaling that it was time for him to leave. The man bowed once more and vanished from view. She threw her unread mail on the wooden kitchen table and proceeded to the center of the room, where a large stone pedestal rose out of the floor.
The Polished Speculum stood up to her waist and was filled to the brim with water. It was what she watched the earth through. She knelt down in front of it and whispered a silent prayer, and recited these words:
"Tristan and Yvaine, King and Queen of Stormhold," and as she did so, she waved her ivory fingers across the surface of the water. Scenery unfamiliar to her shimmered forth, but she was not interested in that. Her eyes skimmed the surface until she located Yvaine. Beautiful as always, she was just sitting there (wherever there was), writing,
Mother Moon pulled a chair up to the Polished Speculum, and watched the events unfold that would lead to Yvaine's death as well as her own. Unable to interfere yet also unable to look away.
Lune sat silently watching over her daughter and preparing herself to be taken. The only thought of comfort was that if her daughter was to die, at least she would die with her; together forever. And that was worth more than all of the coin in the world.