Blogtober 2022 Day Four entry
Eila had convinced her mother to let her apprentice as a sailor at age 13. Now at sea for ten years, she had never lost her sense of awe and wonder at how dazzling were the stars encompassing the dark ocean night.
Since childhood, her favorite constellation was Ursa Major, the Big Bear, so that’s where her eyes went without thinking. When she couldn’t find it, she remembered they didn’t know how the ship was oriented, so she scanned the sky in every direction.
It wasn’t there.
She looked next for Orion, the great hunter whose stars were unmistakable, but he was nowhere to be found.
Keeping her face smiling and singing along with her crew, she found Wynn, Rhys, and Lowys, her navigator, and whispered to each of them, “Join me on the bridge, but be discreet and come alone.”
When they had assembled in the darkness of the bow of the bridge, she asked them all to find a familiar constellation. They turned, as she had, in every direction, and ended in silence.
“Where are we?” Lowys asked.
“Not a good sign when the navigator asks that,” Eila said.
“We couldn’t have crossed the equator, could we?” Rhys asked.
“I’ve been in the southern sea,” Lowys replied. “These aren’t those stars, either.”
“Is this magic, Wynn?” Eila asked. “Could a force that can confuse our compass also cast an illusion of the sky?”
“That’s preferable to the alternative,” Wynn said.
“Which is?”
“That we’re no longer on Earth.”
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