On Family

In Earth's universe, the progress of time is measured in processes governed by the unyielding laws of physics. Stars expire, some gently, some violently. Celestial bodies collide shattering each other into stone shards, or pass only near enough to perturb sufficiently an orbit, which sends a planet careening into the cold depths of interstellar space. Between these events in the annals of cosmic history, biological organisms write their own stories in intricate webs formed by strands of DNA that link generations and contain the secrets of every family's destiny. As such it is virtually impossible to gaze up at the stars and read our individual fates, though many have tried. In Faerie, this unequal footing between the physical and the biological is reversed. Families of faeries emerge from arboreal homes at night and from a glade examine the stellar messages scrawled in the ether. When they don't like what they see, as frequently occurs, they gather each a lantern and bear it aloft on gossamer wings. There, for the entertainment of those who remained below, the lights of the stars and those of the faeries become intermingled and indistinguishable. As simple as that, the message is changed; destinies altered. You, who saw I was vulnerable, gathered together and rewrote a destiny, in which, protected from the dark, I lost my fear and discovered my family, revealed for who they are.