Altair

Illa didn’t understand. She’d done everything right. She’s done everything right! It was meant to be a god. This... ugly, mewling thing on her basement floor, still wet from the eggshell, is no god. It looks up at her with confused, common eyes. No arcane energy, just... a soft, vibrant pink. Maybe it just needs time to grow? That must be it. Surely that must be it. The celebration is only starting, yes, she- she doesn’t need to panic yet. It will grow into its power, into itself.

It will gain power as the Starfall Celebration progresses. It will. It must, or else... what is she to do with it? Oh, gods, there’s a hatchling right there. On the floor. Is she it’s mother now? No, she- she didn’t sign up for that, that would be ridiculous. She’s not a mother. She’s nowhere near equipped to be a mother. “There, there.” She says weakly, scrambling to figure out where she went wrong, awkwardly trying to straighten out it’s tangled mane with her claws, picking out the starlight-pink shards of eggshell.

(She’s pretty sure that mothers use their tongues, but that seems awfully unhygienic.)

The witch turns back to her concoction. Crushed crystal powder, dissolved in the water of Crystal Pools, where arcane energy hummed and sang. It’s birthplace. Feathers from a fallout streak, pink chalcedony powder, Fallout Whisper wings.

“That’s it.” She says out loud, as if trying to calm herself. “Yeah. I was too hasty, huh?” She turns back to the wide-eyed hatchling, the concoction hanging limply from her side. “Gods aren’t born. They’re made.”

She sighs. Gathers herself, then turns back to the hatchling and feels herself smile.

“You just need a helping hand, right?”

And a helping hand she gives it.

She takes baseline readings of the child’s magical potential – it’s not as weak as she feared, true. Already it possesses the skills of an adult, if with a childlike lack of control. It blinks up at her with uncertain, curious, common eyes. It doesn't understand her language, so instead she sets up circumstances where it will want to use it's magic.

A chocolate chip cookie placed conspicuously on the top shelf is effortlessly floated down. Next she weighs the cookie jar with stones, and it floats down to the hatchling without a hitch. She doesn't realize the menace she's created until it's too late. It does not speak, but it reads, tearing through her books with a fervor and scattering pages across the cobblestone floor.

The true tipping point is when she walks into the basement (now littered with an unmade bed, her former cookie jar, her books - all the property of the starchild in her midst, now). She catches it staring up at the ceiling, and she doesn't know why, until she follows it's gaze skyward.

Where a simple wooden floor and ceiling once held her humble home aloft, there is a shining mirror of vast, infinite dark, sapping the heat from the room. And the stars - oh, the stars. There's more than she's seen since she was a hatchling. The Viridian Labyrinth is free from pollution, light pollution included. Her clan snuffed their lanterns after dark, she remembers.

She's never seen so many stars since she was a hatchling.

But this is infinitely more than even that.

She stares, awestruck, and the child scrambles at her, scaling her body, clawing for the stars, the sky, the cosmos, and there's a reverberation from deep within her soul that she knows is not her own-

Home. Home. Home. Please bring me home please take me home please please come home my starchild my youngest god stand beside me taste of creation we are yours as you are mine and I love you I love you I love

The whisper of souls from the universe and it's beloved son sing in harmony, but as soon as the nameless child crests the top of her head and touches one claw to the ceiling, to the stars-

It shatters and ripples and cracks like a broken mirror, falling to stardust-tinged glass shards on the floor. It stares listlessly, and finally, finally, Illa can breathe again. Her veins are on fire. It wasn't a failure after all. Whatever that was, she's never seen anything like it. The child is crestfallen, staring up at the mundane stone and wood that once shone with the eons of the cosmos.

She's playing with something more powerful than she could have dreamed, and this is before she injects the liquid stardust within it's veins.

His eyes grow somehow both solid and ephemeral in response to the eyedrops. His fur grows in length - ever since that night in her basement, it has held faint, silver speckles, but now they blossom and bloom into stars. The wings soon follow suit, cosmic and resplendent. She does not know when his body changes - that was a magic disconnected from her entirely.

She performs her rituals, gently hangs dream catchers above the silent child's bedside. Dream sweetly of stars, she murmurs, her eyes fluttering shut, for you heard them, didn't you? They are yours, yours, yours. One day you will grow to be strong, be our savior, our guiding light into the unknown, our seeker, our shepherd. But for now, you may dream.

Maybe that was his flaw.

The child dreams far too much.

She finds him outside every night, staring up at the stars, listening for a chorus that only he can hear. She gently pleads for him to stay in his room at night, and he stares, seems to comprehend, but he does not obey. She finds him walking forward in a trance, like a boy in a dream, eyes still set on the endless night sky.

She takes to locking his bedroom door at night, but he simply levitates it off the hinges. She tries again the next night, and he evaporates the offending object into burned sawdust. There is no malice, but no barrier will keep it between him and his mother - his true mother, for that is not Illa, could never be Illa. (Her love is not enough. But that's not her fault, is it? She never could have compared to the cosmos. Her love was a shriveled thing, a sapling planted out of season in autumn - how could she compare to a universe that sang, that pleaded, that loved him?)

(For a start, she could have tried.)

Somehow, one night, she knows they have reached a tipping point. That there is no coming back from this, though she knows not what this might be. She stands in the doorframe of her home, between the starchild and the world, and with empty, star-filled eyes, he blasts her aside.

He's closer to a drake grown than a hatchling, now. She does not see anything she recognizes behind the infinite, overlapping constellations in his eyes.

None of her words worked to keep him contained. When those failed, none of her spells or bindings worked either. They should have nestled deep upon the child's soul, firm as iron, but no chains could hold her starchild. She should have known that. She was the one who created him.

Yes, He opens his mouth and answers her thoughts, and it reverberates deep, deeper, within her heart and her soul. She can taste it, all the bittersweet memories and the longing, oh, the longing. You created me, but you are not my mother, my father is daydreams and my mother is the skies, and she loves me, oh, she loves me, she taught me what it is to be loved. She loves you too, the universe is kind, the universe can do nothing but love, but we can't understand. Why you would craft our starchild into a statue, why you would steal him away from the stars? You are breaking our hearts, Illa.

The witch stumbles forward, a spell tangled on her tongue. He waits, and stares - or perhaps the universe stares through his eyes - awaiting an answer, an apology, an excuse. Anything.

He is patient as she collects her thoughts. The universe has all the time in the world, after all. "I- we need help." She says weakly. "I needed to make someone who could help us. Clan Lucerna, they just- they just want to be free. We could do that for them, together."

Perhaps. He, or the universe, or both, answer through his mouth. But I am not your tool to shape, to mold, to forge, you dropped me into lava to melt me to forge a weapon a weapon a weapon a shield against the elements the rain the despair but he is not Mythril, is he blood and flesh and so, so delicate, he has fractured apart and does not even know what he has lost, what you took from me. You killed the humanity, never nurtured it, never let it bloom, choked it in the abyss of winter. There is only divinity left.

"Please." It's meant to be a command, what she says next, but it sounds more like a prayer. "I know I- I made a mistake, but I'll do better. Please. Give him back."

Did you ever give me a name? He asks, and it is an honest question. Her starchild, always so curious through wide, blinking eyes.

She wants to lie. She doesn't have the heart.

In response to her silence, the child of space spreads his wings. As he rises into the air with an unnatural lightness, she can feel it pouring from his mouth -

home home home welcome home welcome home come taste of creation come bask in the starlight, a thousand suns your warmth the comfort of space your blanket at night our child our son we waited so long you are loved you are loved loved loved you will learn how to love, if not as a mortal as a god

Her creation, the youngest god, turns away from her and soars, and she knows, deep in her gut, she will not see him again.

Illa screams.

In rage, in pain, in sorrow, in frustration and failure. All that wasted time, all those wasted resources, for the shepherd to abandon his flock, to chase dreams instead of becoming their guide. He will learn all the secrets of the universe, and he will never share them, now. The stars belonged to him. She never once considered that he, in turn, might belong to the stars.

Through trembling claws, she stares down at the ground. She can't bear to look at the night sky. Not now. Maybe not for a long time. She swallows hard and blinks the tears from her eyes, gritting her teeth and exhaling the frigid night air.

She'll do better next time.

Her next chosen won't turn tail on the flock.

Original Colors: Jade/Taupe/Honey

Given:
- Vial of Elemental Sight
- Scatterscroll (x1)
- Filigree
- Starmap
- Obelisk
- Flair