For Challenge 2: Coriakin on Invisibility.
“At dead of night two noble planets, Tarva and Alambil, will pass within one degree of each other. Such a conjunction has not occurred for two hundred years…” (Dr Cornelius to Caspian, Prince Caspian, Chapter 4.)
Time goes wearily. I am empty of all meaning, here, unseen.
She is coming, I know she is coming. Alambil has gazed at me, and her simple gaze is promise more certain than the most heavy mortal oath. The spell will be lifted, and mercy will let me be seen again, even seen here, in this dull low visibility which I despised, before even that was taken from me. She will come, and will restore me to light, and until then - I must learn to will invisibility, as his will for me, now.
I willed to be unseen, one night. One night, and then seven nights following, holding to my will, I stepped away from the Great Dance and left Tarva and Alambil to shine alone, and from that much sorrow flowed.
Had I been there, seers would have read the skies aright. Had I been there, we three would have made plain that Victory and Peace were sundered by the Outlier, and from that knowledge, much might have been saved from destruction. But now… I wonder: has Men’s trust fallen away from the Stars? Do any now read the Stars, as Centaurs once did? What else did I destroy, when I destroyed the patterns of the Great Dance, that one night, and the seven nights following?
I cannot be seen, and I cannot now look down and know, as once I did. I cannot see, I cannot be seen. Nights and nights the skies swing around me, and I cannot look down and see, and I cannot be seen.
I am Outlier indeed, now, exiled, and exiled, and exiled, from the Dance, from wisdom, from the world. I am alone here with these harmless dull children, and the time goes wearily. I am empty of all meaning here, unseen.