Firenze was still staring through the trees as dusk settled on the forest. He would make his way to a clearing on a little elevation where he could really study the sky. He loved this time of year but it had been unseasonably cool. The day melted into an ever darkening shade of the same hue, a rich, clear royal blue pooling at the horizon. The moon was already glowing a thin sliver at its edge and stars already making their presence known. Almost directly on the other side of the sky Vega and Antares appeared to peer down at him even in the relative brightest of the early evening. Their slight difference in color gave them a curious appearance as they were equally bright. He made a note of this in his mind. The centaurs did not use the names and constellations of the wizards though they also knew them. He went through all the configurations and how they would move in the sky as summer wore on. He tracked in his mind the distance they had traveled and compared them to how the sky looked the year before, five years before, and the time when he first learned their names while he was still young. All of this he would use to try to understand. All of this he would use as a shield to keep from projecting his own ideas of what they could mean onto an impartial expanse of the great unknowable above him.
Under the moon and a little to the left stood Mars, a sparkling red pinprick in the fabric of the heavens. Diagonally and to the right stood Venus brighter than anything else in the sky, rivaling the lit part of the moon even. Firenze stared consumed by the insistence of its beauty. It did not flicker like Mars or the other stars that were easier to see as the sky darkened. Even against the smudge of stars from this part of the country where there was little ambient light, Firenze picked out another pair of stars here, another here as Venus appeared to dim slightly, ironically as the sky darkened further but still shined clearly. He watched the moon, a perfect disc mostly in shadow. He always felt like someone had left part of a door on a lid in the sky. That the shadow could be wedged away to reveal another part of the universe that lit the moon up. It had made him smile that during this time, one couldn't make out the details of the moon even as its edges could be perceived. The sky filled with stars and the pairs that had once been were engulfed in greater star clusters. A smattering, a wash of stars lit the sky. Firenze looked back and forth, studying their placement, the relationships between the stars and the moon, the planets and time.
He felt the chill of early morning and stamped his hooves against the growing chill and the fog rolling out from the lake. Soon it would blanket the lower half of the sky in a soft pinkish fog. By daybreak the fog would have created towering, opaque cathedrals that obscured the last remaining stars as the sky brightened to day. Firenze made his way through the forest a little before that happened but enjoyed watching the fog for a moment. He felt it roll in through the forest and around his legs as he greeted the day with thanksgiving, with gratitude. His flanks brushed through the honeysuckle, already perfuming the air. He picked out the smell of various salvias: mints and sages. This too he remembered and put into context with his star gazing. He still did not understand what the stars meant, what they foretold and none of the centaurs did. It was not their place to understand, only to watch and analyze, maybe even postulate. Their would never be a conclusion so long as he lived, as anything lived. The night would follow the day. The day would follow the night. The fog might roll in depending on the time of day or year or not and the stars would stay in the sky so long as there was a sky and there were stars. He knew the wizards were at war with someone, even then. Those wizards would fall, as all wizards do, as all men do, as all living things do. Everything will die. The stars too burned out even as their light could be measured and seen over a distance over time. It was not a burden to hold this knowing. This study was his great joy and honor. His skin rippled as a cold breeze blew through the forest and he moved slowly through the comfort of this place. Knowing its boundaries, its sounds and that he could still be shocked by its loveliness and the impartial violence of nature, Firenze thought about what he might eat and if he would rather rest now or continue to study for the remainder of the day.
What did the stars say? They did not tell Firenze or anyone else studying that evening of an upcoming plans for a birthday party for two women, best friends. They did not tell of the domestic bliss of old friends who had married one another and had a baby staying at the woman's mother-in-law's house. They did not speak of another young couple who had also just had a baby who would soon go into hiding because the life of that baby had been threatened. That this baby's father was pulling faces and making this very baby laugh and the mother was on the couch too distracted to read for watching her husband and son playing together. Nor did the stars say anything of a man waiting in a forest surrounded by a ring of trees, not waiting for another man because it wasn't their time to meet yet. The moon would tell them both to keep an appointment and the moon said to them only that the appointment was forthcoming. The stars said nothing of a man who still loved one of the women, what he considered love, running to another man to get his help for betraying what he thought was that very same love. None of these people had constellations or stars named after them. Some of them were in fact named after the stars themselves, which the stars did not seem to mind or even notice. They only showed up in pairs that evening. They were watched and gave the impression that they could watch also but that was the projection and imagination of those watching the sky. That the sky was materializing little faces, eyes peering down from the ceiling of the Earth was only the impression it gave.
They said nothing because they were stars. They did not know because they have no knowing. It had always been so that the living found patterns where there were none and yet someone closer to home spoke in a voice not her own. That voice filled a glass ball in a building made to house such voices and glowed with the knowing of that voice. This too is a projection. That voice could have meant nothing if everyone had treated it as nothing but a long time ago, there was a spell and a charm and a curse combined to recognize the importance of such voices and so a copy of it was kept. If only, if only they had all just treated that voice like the centaurs treat the stars. With study and reverence, understanding the potential to tell a story but that the story may not be understood in this time or any. That the stars and those voices, even as they are witnessed are not a testimony to the lives of the living but in witnessing them, are evidence, and by extension a celebration, of a life itself.
