Chapter 5

Aaralyn walked down the beach toward Helia on the last day of the year, leaving no footprints in her wake. The sun was setting across the Gulf of Helia in the west, a hundred shades of red and gold like starfire burning across the sky. Her shadow stretched long over the sand at this hour, and high tide sent the waves far up the shore, seafoam lapping at the edges of her boots as she walked. The wind was bitterly cold, but she didn't feel it. She had never felt the cold since the aether replaced her blood with molten starfire Ages ago.

The red-orange glow from the setting sun flared brighter for a moment, then faded as another person came to walk beside her. Aaralyn tilted her head in Callisto's direction but never slowed her stride. "Sister."

"Sister," Callisto drawled, the Dawn Star fisting her Solarian robes in both hands to lift them out of reach of the tide.

Three more steps and another flare of starfire brought Nilsine to them, wearing the fur-lined leather flight jacket of an E'ridian aeronaut. The Dusk Star tossed her braid with its metal hair adornments over one shoulder and matched her stride to the other two. "I hope this won't take long."

"As long as it needs to," Aaralyn said easily.

The tide receded then rushed up the shore again, bringing with it a flash of starfire and Farren, barefoot and shirtless but wearing colorful trousers. The Eclipse Star kicked their foot through the receding wave, sending droplets of water arcing into the sky, glittering like clarion crystal. "Next time, we gather on one of my ship-cities."

"No," Callisto said immediately.

Farren threw back their head and laughed, striding over wet sand, never minding the waves that washed up to tangle sea foam around their ankles. "You are missing out, sister."

"I like my feet planted firmly on the earth, thank you."

"We all do, but the sea is just another kind of land if you think about it."

Another flare of starfire, and Xaxis appeared, the Midnight Star wrapped up in a heavy winter coat and the ushan favored by his children. "Next time, I would rather we not wage a war."

"As would I," Aaralyn said.

A last flare of starfire on the shore up ahead burned bright against the encroaching dark. Innes appeared from within its fiery depths, the Twilight Star ever prideful beneath their attention. "It was needed."

Callisto planted her feet on the sand, along with the others. "Was it truly? We agreed when we first came here and were changed that we would each claim a country to guide. No one of us held the right to the entire continent and Maricol's seas."

"We also decreed we would not reach for the stars," Farren said, almost tartly.

Innes turned his head to stare at the setting sun, the features of his face bathed in its fading light. "Our children will reach for them one day, as we did."

His voice carried an ache in it for the memory of a home Aaralyn only ever saw in her deepest dreams anymore. She crossed the distance between them and took Innes' hand in hers, tangling their fingers together. When he would not look at her, she touched his chin with her other hand, turning his head so that he had to face her as the rest of their siblings gathered around them.

"Maricol saved us even as it remade us. We have a duty to those who came after us to show them this world is home," Aaralyn said.

"We spent thousands of years culling the seeds of progress, but they were always going to grow. Progress cannot be stopped."

Nilsine crossed her arms over her chest and turned to face the sunset. "Perhaps we should cultivate a new Age, hm?"

Callisto snorted and faced west as well. "What do you think this war was all about?"

Innes turned his face into Aaralyn's touch, his breath warm against the skin of her palm. She so missed having him close, the last few centuries an ache she'd had to endure alone. "Husband, we tried it your way. Let us go back to how we were before, where we walked this road together and guided our children as one."

"Would you still have me? After all I've done?" Innes asked.

"Yes." Daijal would become a footnote in the long history of the Ages they all sought to build in the centuries and millennia that stretched out ahead of them. Ashion would be whole once more, as it had been at the beginning and would be until the end.

"I would appreciate not being drawn into your spats next time," Nilsine said.

"It brought your children out of isolation," Xaxis rumbled.

Nilsine waved off his words. "I was working on that."

Aaralyn let them squabble in the ways they had long, long ago, when they'd served beneath her in the space between stars. It was familiar, this bond with them, this love they all shared for each other and the children they guided.

Innes stepped out of reach but didn't go far, didn't disappear as he had over the past few centuries. "A new beginning?"

Aaralyn looked west, the six of them watching the last remnants of sunlight fade away as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. The sky was a blanket of deep blue turning black as night encroached from the east, bringing with it a million and more stars to light the road ahead.

"A new Age," Aaralyn said.