Awe

Isendel
212

It was love at first sight.

She was awake when it happened, assigned sentry duty over the stores of shot and powder. Sat on a small stool outside the storage tent, she rested her head on one of the taut lines staking the tent pole to the ground, eyes drifting unseeing over the blank sweep of black sky as she mentally reviewed types of shot, amounts of powder and the different tensile strengths and tonnage of the various types of catapults, ballista and cannon.

The first lights eased in so slowly she didn’t immediately realize anything had changed. In the void, one tiny light pulsed to life, as though a mote of a campfire had drifted up too high and gotten caught on something unseen. Then another. Then another. Another, surrounded by a soft smudgy streak of lesser lights, almost a glowing dust. Sav blinked, wondering if she’d fallen asleep unknowing, or slipped and was seeing those stun-sparks that came with a particularly hard blow to the head.

More winked into existence, strewn carelessly over the night sky, like a farmer sowing handfuls of seed over fresh-turned earth, quickening until they were multiplying so rapidly her darting eyes could no longer keep up with the newcomers.

Then—

A massive white shape, oblong and angular, far larger than any of the previous specks that now peppered the sky. It flowered in the velvet, a pool of glimmering light so bright in comparison to the smaller lights, in comparison to the inky blackness of the night, that Sav had to squint as her vision blurred, blinking away tears of exposure.

In the distance, someone screamed, and Sav became aware of the rising babble of voices, climbing sharply as others woke with the scream. People poked their head out of their tents, calling in an alarm that rose as everyone saw the strange new light flooding the night, the massive lights just hanging silently, ominously overhead, somehow not falling. The camp boiled into an anthill of frantic activity—people clutching each other wondering if the sky was going to fall, if this was some new attack by witches, if the old gods had returned.

“Sav, girl, are you all right?” Skelta’s voice came from behind her, and Sav turned to face her, pulled out of the half-trance the appearance of the sky-lights had induced in her. The older woman’s face was a curious carving of shadows, lit by the orange glow of the torches and the silvery-pale light cast by the oblong, but the expression of concern was unmistakable, which turned into alarm as she saw Sav’s face. “Are you hurt? Did anything happen to you?”

Sav touched her face, surprised to find her cheeks wet with uncontrollable tears. Unable to speak, she just shook her head, and Skelta’s face softened. “Oh, Savvy, don’t cry—I don’t know what it is, but it’s all right, we’ll be all right, the Swans are strong and the Baroness will protect us,” she said, folding her in a hug, and Sav didn’t know how to correct her. The tears weren’t simply from the sudden burst of light, or shock, or fear of the new, unknown objects in the sky.

It was awe, pure and clear.

Never had she seen anything so transcendent, and she knew, deep down, she never would again.

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Awe