ORIGIN

January felt as though she'd spent ages in a dream. Wandering, seeing but barely feeling, trying and failing to understand.

She had spent ages trying to learn of letters, reading, runes. The concept of one thing representing another, in anything from language to prophecy, had fascinated her. But it had always felt just out of reach, drifting away just as her paws settled for it. Orion's stars had become her focal point, the nexus around which her nascent beliefs struggled to form. Surely those patterns meant something. Surely they were not random. She had catalogued them, drawn them on the walls, tried to find meaning and shape in their glitter and gleam.

January had not known of Noctua.

Here she sat, gazing for the first time on the real thing: distant flickers in the firmament, a scatter of diamonds in a black velvet sky. She sat silent, a little ways from the Shrine, far enough that no light would blind her to this sky. The gemstone at her chest sparkled in the starlight, and she tried to memorize these new stars. It felt like everything she'd ever known was coalescing, swirling to make some new and more coherent truth, something she'd never really understood but... might, if she stared long enough. If she learned what the stars had to teach.

She felt dizzy, sometimes. Like if she sat here too long, she might fall up, into that dark, and be lost in whatever lay between those lights.