Non-canonical names: Eudokia (Byzantine Empire), Helena (Ancient Greece), Khani (Assyria), Hamilcar (Carthage), Batnoam (Phoenicia), Carlino (Seborga), Ewald (Germania), Adelheid (Liechtenstein), Basch (Switzerland), Dieuwer (Frisia), Anneliese (fem!Austria), Lotte (Belgium), Timothy (Netherlands), Mikkel (Denmark), Heinrich (Saxony); also featuring human OCs Marce, Atilia, Thiphilnia, Renata, Gunderic, and Theoderic.

Full prompt: "Italy, an artistic child who has always trouble with bullies, dreams of becoming a world-class wishing star maker like his grandpa Rome.

When Rome dies, Italy is left to struggle toward his dream without his guidance until a very interesting family moves in next door: Germania, another renowned wishing star maker, and his two sons, Germany and Prussia, who are his creations. Normal wishing stars are human shaped, though they don't possess the mental capacity to function like real people, which makes the sons unique. Italy persuades Germania to take him on as an apprentice and becomes close friends with Germany who protects Italy from bullies.

The day comes when Germany becomes a mature star and must leave Italy to reside in the sky with the rest of his kind. Germany hates being stuck in the sky, listening to the wishes of others but unable to grant his own to be with Italy… until Italy makes a wish that only Germany can grant: not to be afraid and alone anymore. Thus Germany is able to descend from the sky to live the rest of his life with his beloved Italy. Bring on the fluff!"


In the city of Saint Stanislav, near enough to the slow river of the same name that the cries of the dockworkers and clangs of the ship bells fill every hour, in a quarter not as choked with soot as some but where the glass is often blackened, there is a small tenement. It is just off Old Smithy, and the rain gutters and fire escapes have left streaks of rust down the walls, and there are watermarks on the ground floor, and a sign in the window in careful lettering reading "ROOMS TO RENT- ask for Braginsky". On the top story, four up from the peeling door, there is a tiny window, cleaner than most (which is an oddity between Sooty Bridge and Lord Nikolai Bridge), with incongruous red calico curtains, inexpertly sewn.

The occupant of the garret room with this window is Feliciano Vargas, who is nineteen years old and once had a family, two brothers and a grandfather. He'd had a family, but one by one they'd gone: Lovino to the army, leaving letters and eventually a commendation for having 'laid down his life bravely for his country', Carlino to the city of Housemartin, leaving one or two photographs and a paid ticket for a three-hundred-mile third-class train trip, and finally his Nonno, eyes failing and hands too clumsy to work on the stars, had never woken up one morning, leaving Feliciano seventeen and alone in Saint Stanislav, washing dishes, running shop errands, and living in a garret room rented out by Mr. Ivan Braginsky for honestly too much a month, looking at the stars.

Two years later, he is still in the same place. Before his Nonno had died, he had imagined being a great star-maker like Nonno, better than the ones he spoke of with disdain: Eudokia who was a pale imitation, Helena who lacked true refinement, and so did Khani and Hamilcar, and Batnoam's methods were outdated, and on and on… he had dreamed of it, watching the stars long after Lovino and Carlino were asleep, imagining his creations up above the cloud of the city. They would shine, and be as good as Nonno's or even better, and the wishes they would grant would be the kind that moved mountains and changed worlds.

From his little window, clean as it is, he can barely see the stars beyond the smoke of the factories. He does not have much time, anyhow, because most of his waking hours are spent hurrying back and forth from Carriedo's grocery delivering boxes of produce shipped down the river (they keep him awake at night, indirectly, the noise of the ships they came on through his thin walls, and Feliciano supposes that's rather funny except for the part where he can't sleep) and then washing dishes at the tiny restaurant Carriedo's sisters run.

Feliciano's grandfather had died at the unfortunate point in Feliciano's education where he knew enough to make a star, but not enough to make one well, or at cost; and the last of their money had gone to the funeral. Carlino hadn't even been able to show up.

Feliciano exists, however, through the biting winters and stifling summers, which are always worse alone, through the gang that chases him down the street because he is smaller and meek-looking, through fingers raw from soap and arms sore from lifting boxes, on the hope that somehow he will earn a little money, a little free time, a little space, just one chance to create stars that outshine the world.

And then one day, he is woken up in the gray of dawn by three—no, four—voices coming from the story below him.

One he recognizes as Braginsky's younger sister, and then there are three unfamiliar male ones: one deep and curt, one harsh and loud, and one deep and quiet. Feliciano slips out of his room and down the stairs, dark and narrow, to watch the three new voices move into the first rooms on the right.

The curt voice belongs to an old man with long white hair, the next to a younger one, seemingly roughly the age Lovino was when he died, with white hair and very pale skin, and the last to a taller, younger man with very straight posture.

Feliciano only catches a glimpse of them before he scurries back up the stairs in fear of Natalya.

When he goes out that morning, from the stifling indoor air to the only slightly less stifling heat of a Saint Stanislav summer, he passes the youngest of the three new men.

It's odd, but as he slips by this man, clutching his breakfast of bread and a tiny little butter, Feliciano seems to catch a glow in the corner of his eye, faint but there.


He spends most of the morning hurrying back and forth on bicycle and foot, dodging carriages and pedestrians, delivering boxes of peaches and figs to the houses on Kingsmarch, Alfred, the other shop-boy, would help out, but Feliciano knows he's spending most of his time trying to get the young foreign lady at the deli two doors down to notice him, so his deliveries all stay in the immediate area.

It's on his return from the fourth or so delivery—Williams household, Graze Street, one box of apricots and a pound of marionberries—that he notices he's being followed. He's on foot, it wasn't far enough to warrant the bicycle, and there're four of them following him.

The usual, Feliciano thinks bitterly, and quickens his pace.

He manages to reach the shop before any one of the four begins anything, and they loiter at the intersection with Chiswell outside the little church.

The rest of the day can't go by slowly enough.

Feliciano hurries down Old Smithy street when his shift is over and Berwald comes to replace him, old twilight heat weighing on his shoulders with the red-yellow light of sunset through coal-smoke, and the four follow him over Sooty Bridge and onwards, at a saunter, and Feliciano can't help looking back over his shoulder, and—

—they catch up to him and pull him into a doorway.

"W-what do you want?" Feliciano knows the answer, even though they don't say it out loud, and he can't keep the shake out of his voice because the four are all a head taller at least, and the fact is he hasn't got his paycheck yet and he hasn't any money on him but that doesn't stop one of the four from raising his fist and—


Nursing a split lip and swollen cheek, Feliciano trudges into the Braginsky tenement. Ivan's older sister pulls him aside quickly.

"What happened to you?" Her eyes are concerned, the way Lovino's would be after Feliciano came home with a black eye, and she maneuvers him to the narrow stairs to sit down.

"Nothing, Miss Braginskaya."

"Was not nothing. You are hurt."

Feliciano looks at the floor, glaring a little.

"Was it them?"

Nod.

She tells him to sit, hurries into her rooms, and bustles back quickly with a chip of ice wrapped in a dishcloth. "For your mouth."

"Thank you, Miss Braginskaya."

"Also for you. Dumplings."

They're hot and a little sticky and wrapped in the classifieds section of a tabloid newspaper and they smell of meat, and Feliciano grins thankfully even though it makes his face hurt.

Miss Braginskaya stands up again, laying a hand on his shoulder. "You are too skinny."

Feliciano just ducks his head again, mumbling his thanks, and climbs the stairs.

When he reaches the third floor, he sees the youngest new man again, just through the crack of the door, ink spattered on his shirtsleeves, and hears voices through the wall, and again for a second his eyes catch a strange warm glow at the corners.

He eats the dumplings for dinner along with a carrot and a little bread, and watches the stars through the small window, wrapped in the sounds of clanging ship bells and rumbling carriages and the once-every-half-hour screech of the train whistles as they come in from Oxhorn and Bremel, until he falls asleep wrapped in thin blankets with the faint images of stars behind cloud spread across his inner eyelids.