Valerian

His name is Valerian. Once, it was the name of a knight, who laid down his life for his liege. In another life, it was the name of a priest who chose the blade over blasphemy. It is a name passed from the loving to the brave, one generation at a time. And at long last, reincarnation has awarded its harrows and sacrifices with a peaceful eternity.

Valerian is a shepherd who walks among the stars. With a rise of his wing, he gathers Cygnus, Orion, and all the Pleiades close. He blankets constellations in his loving embrace and finds them a home in the glittering night. He is their keeper, their guide.

As the seasons turn, Valerian ushers Taurus and Gemini through the heavens to sleep below the horizon for six long months. With the breaking of winter, he awakens Leo, rouses Hydra, nudges Virgo until each flickering pinprick of light has left the coolness of his side and taken its place over fields of budding green. And year by year, this shepherd leads his flock through the arcing sky, and at the end of their pilgrimage, sends it adrift in a sea of midnight, on the other side of the world.

At odd times, Valerian will shelter his little stars close and watch the racing path of a comet - a stray young ram, striking out on its own - as it passes through the velvet fields of his heavens and winks out, gone on its way to distant skies. To the nomads, the passersby, Valerian can give only the gift of his gaze. How he longs to stretch out his wing like a fishing net and bring in a bounty of faraway lights, but no. The home of these lights is elsewhere, and their keeper is another. Somewhere, in foreign nights, another shepherd with a golden moon shimmering in the curve of his velvet wing will find these lambs and take them as his own.

Content with the span of his flock, Valerian turns his face towards the distant sun - an orb of pure radiance against the dark of the infinite expanse. Soon, it will be summer. In days to come, Aquila, Lyra, and Scorpius will flourish and burn their pale fires through balmy nights. With a flick of his tail, Valerian turns towards the horizon and makes his journey to the sleeping place of his lambs. As the seasons turn, Valerian walks among the stars.