21st day of the 3rd month 170th Year of the 8th era

Aife stretched and placed her hands on the pile of tomes and books in front of her. She sat at a desk in a room filled with books that lined the walls and were also stored in great bookcases that rose to the ceiling. She had been here for days reading, pouring over the ancient scripts, looking for the prophecy that the god Mars had told her about all those years ago. At first, she had been only given access to the common library that was available to all. After reading all relevant tomes that were present in that library, her father had asked her if she had read the Complete Biography of Human Stars. After asking the librarian, she was told that the book was only made available for those with advanced degrees.

Aife had taken up schooling and completed a degree in the forbidden arts of the world. She had also completed an advanced degree in divinity lore, after which she was given permission to access the academic library, where she was now.

In defiance of her father, she had neglected to update her paint as she did her degrees and as a result now sat in the library completely naked, without even the customary elven body paint to hide the cursed deformities. Many people kept away from her; the reminder of their own curse made interaction uncomfortable.

A librarian walked past her desk, an elder woman painted with a soft yellow of knowledge seeking. She frowned at Aife and kept walking.

A loud yawn echoed down the room and bounced off the vaulted ceiling, followed by a series of loud hushes from several other patrons many with either brightly painted body paint or paint that was beginning to fade.

Aife smiled to herself, and as her stomach grumbled, she arose and went in search of food. As she walked past the counter, a young man with a rough face, bearded, and nobody paint stood at the counter as the librarian tried to record the books that he wanted to borrow.

The librarian looked up at her and her mouth flew open. The man at the counter noticed and turned to look at what had shocked the counter librarian and then locked eyes with Aife.

“A fellow scholar,” rumbled the young man, as he ran a hand through his beard.

“What makes you think that?” said Aife, turning to face him, brightness flickering in her eyes.

“Well you seem to be in the same predicament as me,” he answered gesturing at his unpainted body and looked down at the floor.

“Are you also trying to find a prophecy that a god hinted to, and did you have to complete two degrees just to be able to pick up the thread of what he was talking about?” she returned.

The librarian placed the books at the young man’s elbow and, blushing bright red, ducked away from the counter and scuttled down towards the bookshelves.

“No,” replied the young man. “I was merely saying that we both have been hitting the books so hard that our vanity paint has worn off.”

“Oh that,” Aife said, looking down. “I haven’t painted myself in years.”

“How do you get food in here?” he asked, looking above her head.

“They don’t allow food. I am going to get some,” Aife dismissed, as her stomach growled.

The young man picked up the books at his elbow. “Do you mind if I join you for something to eat?”

Aife looked at the young man. His frame was slim and soft, with small flecks of yellow paint still clinging to various parts of his body. His head seemed too large for his frame as if he had stopped building muscles to favor his brain. He seems harmless enough. Why doesn’t he look at me? Am I that repulsive?

“OK, you may come.” Aife waved for him to follow as she stepped through the vine curtain and out into the Scholar’s Quarter.

“Where do you normally eat?” he asked, stepping behind up her.

“Just over there.” Aife pointed as she started walking in great purposeful strides across the grassy plaza.

They walked through a vine-covered portal into a small restaurant on the other side of the grassy plaza. The room was filled with small tables and chairs that were formed from the growth of the parent tree. In each corner was a small booth with seats carved out of the tree and a table seating several emerging from the tree. The wood was covered with a gentle soft moss that made the hard, wooden seats easy to sit on. Aife walked over towards an empty booth and slid into one facing the wall.

The young man slipped in, facing her, and looked at the table between them.

“Now that you are here,” commented Aife, “I should know your name.”

“I am Ion,” he answered with a smile, glancing up at her face and then turning away, wiping away the moisture gathering in the corners.

“I am Aife,” she reciprocated.

Ion looked around the room quickly then leaned in. “I am not at risk of being whisked away, am I?”

Aife laughed, leaning back against the bench she was sitting on.

“What makes you think that?” she asked drying her eyes.

“Well, you’re the princess,” he began looking around again, “and we are not wearing our paints. I feel a little exposed.”

Aife reached out and grasped his hands pulling them to the center of the table.

“I come here nearly all the time,” she began. “I have never seen anyone being whisked away.”

Ion blushed and ducked his head, then blushed again as he caught himself looking at her body. Aife chuckled and raised one hand into the air. A serving girl painted with white and grey stripes appeared at their booth. She ignored Aife and looked right at Ion.

“Two of my usual please,” Aife ordered for her and Ion.

The serving girl dashed away, blushing.

“So tell me what you are researching so hard that you forgot to go home and sleep?” Aife asked, releasing Ion’s hands and leaning back.

“I started researching celestial bodies and their course in the sky,” Ion began.

“I too am researching the same thing.”

“I thought you said that you were trying to make sense of a god’s prophecy?” asked Ion, picking at a crack in the tabletop.

“Oh, I am,” she replied. “What have you found out about the movements of the celestial bodies?”

“I have found that the night lights move in a set pattern that can be predicted nearly perfectly for about one thousand years. Then something happens, and it is all wrong for a couple of days and then the cycle resets.”

“What happens every thousand years that causes the night lights to change?”

“That is what I am trying to work out.”

“Do we have any record of what the stars look like during those events?”

“Sadly no,” answered Ion. “It is at that point that the whole world goes through a massive cataclysm, and everyone is dealing with that. The last time this happened was a little over one hundred and seventy cycles ago.”

Aife leaned back. “That is good. I want to look at your research. I need to know what constellations were in the sky during my birth.”

“OK,” answered Ion. “When was your birthday?

Aife smiled at him as the serving lady came back and placed their order in front of them, then left with her nose in the air.

“I was born on the first day of the one-hundredth year of my father’s reign,” Aife answered, watching the barmaid across the room.

“The first day of the first month?” Ion asked.

“Yeah,” answered Aife turning back to look at Ion

“That day is strange.”

“How so?”

“Well, it only had one star in the sky that night. It is known as the Maiden star, a powerful star that only appears once every hundred years except for the thousand-year cycle end.”

“What do you know about the Maiden star?”

“Not much.” Ion shrugged. “Just that there is a prophecy that goes with the star.”

“What is the prophecy?” Aife leaned forward over her plate.

“I am not sure.”

Aife sat back in the chair.

“I do know that you need to consider prophecy to find it,” commented Ion.

“That seems to be my problem. I need to know the prophecy to find the star to find the prophecy. It’s all going around in a circle, one that I can’t seem to break. Anyone that asks about one is told that they need to know the about the other.” Aife reached out and picked up one of the grilled tubers on the plate before her, placed the end in her mouth and bit off a small part.

“Not much has been written about the Maiden star. Most of the focus has been placed on the more regular stars; Hunter, Mage, King, Cross, Knight, Dragon, Devourer, Tower, Thief, and Boat. They each dominate the sky for a year, then repeat the cycle for a hundred years, then the Maiden appears. Every one-hundred Maidens we get the cataclysm.” Ion reached for some food popped it into his mouth.

“The cataclysm must have something to do with the star in the sky.”

Ion swallowed. “I believe that there is meant to be a sign that appears every thousand years, but something has gone wrong and it doesn’t appear.”

“What do you think it could be?”

“I have no idea, but many people have put forth that it would be a mother sign, but it’s just speculation.”

“Why do they think that?”

“They believe that because all of the deities have a male-female duality or none, that the signs should also match that. A mother sign to balance the king, Knight, Mage, Thief, and Hunter.”

“Only the king has a gender,” observed Aife, eating another grilled tuber.

“That is true, as we know it,” agreed Ion. “However, that is not enough to build a thesis on, so I have had to do some more research. I have discovered that in the first era, during the Dark Races War that the ruler was always called the 'king', regardless of sex.”

“So, you are saying that the king has no gender.”

“Exactly,” nodded Ion. “I am beginning to think that the missing sign is not the mother but the master.” He popped another grilled tuber into his mouth.

“So then why doesn’t he appear every one-thousand years?”

“I think something happened in the first era that caused the world to go out of alignment and the master sign has never appeared.”

“What do you think it could be?”

“I have no idea,” Ion sighed. “There are no records going back that far.”

He leaned back against the bench, the plate of grilled tubers all finished.

“Thank you very much for your insights,” Aife said standing up and extending her hand to Ion.

Ion stood, picked up his books, and took her hand. A spark jumped through Aife’s hand and coursed up her arm. She looked at him, her eyes widening a little. She then hastily dropped his hands and turned on her heels.

What am I doing, the two of you could be good together? No, it’s not the time. You are letting an opportunity go to waste, come on, girl, you have had no one please you since leaving the temple, you need this. No. I am not ready. If I see him again, I will see if he likes me. I am hideous, and he is already afraid of being taken away. I don’t want Father to have a reason to take him away.

Aife strode out of the café and marched across the grassy plaza. She turned at the library to her right and walked along the path that cut between the great trees. Then she came to a small portal with a thick vine covering the entrance. She pushed aside the vines and stepped in. Inside was a small cramped room covered in untended moss coating the fixtures of the room. The room smelled damp and cloudy. On the far side of the room was another portal also with thick brown vines. A small wisp of smoke seeped out of the room. Aife adjusted her eyes to the darkness and then stepped forward and through the second vine-covered portal. Inside was a room devoid of plant life, and completely dark. A thin, pale woman with hair that trailed down to the ground stood in the room. Her face was angular, and her nose was round. She bustled around the small workbench set in a nook in the far left of the room. The bench was covered with glass bottles, containing liquids of various colors that glowed faintly enough to illuminate the nook. The rest of the room seemed to eat the light. Aife placed a hand on the left wall and carefully inched her way across the room of darkness towards the nook.

“There is nothing on the floor, Aife,” muttered the pale woman without turning her head away from the workbench.

Aife straightened up and strode across the room. She walked into a thin wall of water that hung in the portal to the nook, pushed it aside, and stepped inside. The nook was barely big enough for the two of them. The pale woman turned and faced Aife. She sat on a small space of clear workbench.

“You arrived right on time,” she said. “I was kind of hoping you would be a few hours late.” The woman smiled at Aife, causing her to blush.

“Don’t worry, you will see him again,” she muttered.

Awesome. Not why I am here.

“How did you know I would be here?” asked Aife.

“You are the only child of royalty born on the Maiden star,” said the pale woman. “It's okay; you may look at me. I am not ashamed of myself.”

Aife eyes widened. She can read my thoughts.

“I keep a close eye on you.” She smiled.

“I know you are the Prophet of Din,” commented Aife. “I expected an older woman.”

“You were,” commented the pale woman. “I can make myself look old if that is what you want.” She raised her hand into the air and snapped her fingers. The pale woman disappeared, and an old fat hag perched before her, standing no taller than Aife’s collar bone even though she now stood on the desk.

“No, no,” protested Aife.

“Good,” exclaimed the hag. She once again snapped her fingers and the pale beauty appeared before her.

“That is amazing,” gawked Aife casting her eyes over the returned pale woman. She was thin but not too thin. Her lithe body was well-formed and didn’t display any unneeded fat. Her fingers were long and thin extending from large hands, giving the pale woman a slightly clumsy look.

“No, I can’t teach you,” snapped the pale lady as Aife’s eyes returned to hers.

“I have come to ask you about the night I was born,” Aife said.

“You were born on the first Maiden star of this cycle, and you were born to royalty, a strange combination indeed.”

“I spoke to an elf named Ion and he told me there is a prophecy about the Maiden star, and I thought that you, as the Prophet of Din, would at least know what that prophecy was.”

“I can tell you the prophecy.” She picked up a glass vial and stepped past Aife.

A waft of herbs and sweet spices tickled Aife’s nose as the pale woman pushed past her. Aife followed the pale woman out of the nook into the main room. The room was circular with a dome that extended perfectly above. In the center of the room was a small pedestal carved into the shape of an eleven-pointed star, each point to represent the eleven aspects of the sky.

The Prophet of Din stepped up to the pedestal and indicated that Aife should stand opposite. She then poured the contents of the glass vial on to the portal. Light burst forth from the portal and split into eleven beams, hit the ceiling, and formed the eleven signs of the sky.

“These are the signs of the sky and the guardians of time. Ten to mark the years and then one, the Maiden to mark ten cycles of ten.”

“Yeah, everyone knows about the eleven,” said Aife. She then looked at the Prophet of Din, who was scowling at her. Aife ducked her head and waited.

“The Maiden guards the ten cycles of ten, and refreshes the ten, but when she herself has completed ten cycles she herself needs to be refreshed, but because she can’t be refreshed the cataclysm happens. We have started to count out time, marking the time from one cataclysm to another. What we should be doing is trying to resolve this problem. But we are not allowed to partake in the refreshing because we were the first cataclysm.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Elven War prevented the rise of the Maiden’s refresher.”

“And only I can save my people?”

“The Maiden wants to be refreshed and gave us the prophecy to set in motion the rebirth of the refresher,” continued the Prophet of Din, ignoring Aife’s interruptions. “The prophecy is this:

A purple maiden born

To my cyclic star

Taken from hearth and home,

Her loins shall only

Be fruitful for him,

Son of royalty and wanderer.

Great grief he shall bear,

Nine generations

then the maiden shall rest."