[ Each exchange flares in his awareness. Each draws shape between these bright points, interconnecting in a way that seems so small until the whole picture comes into view by Cyrene and Phainon's wills. To wait through the millions of cycles on the singularity known as a miracle is an exercise in faith so profound he can't even name the emotion it fills him with. It aches with the wishes of millions, with the will of the whole planet.
To wrest it from the jaws of its endless destruction, to turn calculation into courage, to secure its sunrise...
What does it take, he wonders, watching everything unfold between a dream and reality... what does it take to rewrite fate? In defiance, in the burning constellations of hope? He doesn't know. The possibility is so vast that it arcs long into the cradle of the universe, into the fabric of time. But he's not just a spectator. He understands that much when Cyrene singles his presence out, offering him the same unerring belief that carries these cycles through to each end. That man, that entity Lygus — identified he and Caelus as the same thing. Intrusion Variable.
But as he watches the Astral Express descend through the clouds like a falling star, like a dragon, like deliverance, he thinks he understands what the moment that heralds a true miracle is like. Even without it, Caelus is still all of those things, sowing the light of his compassion no matter where he goes.
There is nothing to him that doesn't matter.
And as Cyrene approaches him again on the cusp of Lygus's desperation to contain the trailblazer, the sensation of his hands in hers so real, the soft caress of wandering dove impressing on what he supposes is his soul, he returns the gesture. His fingers tighten in hers.
He may not have the same hope that carries this planet and its heirs and the trailblazer towards that horizon they chase.
But he does have hope pressed somewhere into his faulted heart. Touched by the authority of Time —
...and by the will of the one with the Stellaron heart.
no subject
To wrest it from the jaws of its endless destruction, to turn calculation into courage, to secure its sunrise...
What does it take, he wonders, watching everything unfold between a dream and reality... what does it take to rewrite fate? In defiance, in the burning constellations of hope? He doesn't know. The possibility is so vast that it arcs long into the cradle of the universe, into the fabric of time. But he's not just a spectator. He understands that much when Cyrene singles his presence out, offering him the same unerring belief that carries these cycles through to each end. That man, that entity Lygus — identified he and Caelus as the same thing. Intrusion Variable.
But as he watches the Astral Express descend through the clouds like a falling star, like a dragon, like deliverance, he thinks he understands what the moment that heralds a true miracle is like. Even without it, Caelus is still all of those things, sowing the light of his compassion no matter where he goes.
There is nothing to him that doesn't matter.
And as Cyrene approaches him again on the cusp of Lygus's desperation to contain the trailblazer, the sensation of his hands in hers so real, the soft caress of wandering dove impressing on what he supposes is his soul, he returns the gesture. His fingers tighten in hers.
He may not have the same hope that carries this planet and its heirs and the trailblazer towards that horizon they chase.
But he does have hope pressed somewhere into his faulted heart. Touched by the authority of Time —
...and by the will of the one with the Stellaron heart.
What does he need to do? ]