The grasses kiss my calves as I weave through the field. Halfway between the observatory and the slowly flooding fields at the base of the hill, I find my favorite spot and settle in for the night. Whispers of flower petals join the scratching of grass blades in the early spring chorus of wind. I breathe out deeply, relieved to finally bathe in the incandescent light of the moon. Tilting my face towards the sky, I allow my eyes to unfocus. I watch as the canvas above me blossoms with swirls of shimmering yellow. 

The subtle gleam of Indigo pulls my vision to the subject of my wonder—a small star due north of our observatory that I have never seen move. Of course, stars never move; it is our planet that twirls away from them each night. As the Earth dances in its orbit, we should observe the change in the cosmos. Instead, I always see little Indigo in the same spot every single night. Its hue only ever illuminating this hill. Most nights, I am convinced that I am imagining things. Other nights I pretend it is my star, placed there only for my eyes. I wave gently in greeting to my friend as I lay on my back. Ink dipped branches high in the sky sway into my view as the chorus of the night rattles on. 

~~

I awake to a stack of papers hitting me in the face. “I don’t pay you to sleep on the job, Solaria.”

“You don’t pay me anything,” I grumble as I spit parchment off of my mouth. 

“I pay you in dividends of not being homeless,” responds the exasperated voice of Setz, the observatory’s keeper.

“This is a terrible arrangement,” I say, fully opening my eyes. The sun lazily greets me from its perch atop where the sky meets the sea. 

“I can find cheaper labor if you want to quit,” Setz quips, offering me his hand. 

“Can’t find cheaper than free!”

“You cost me my sanity,” he hoists me to my feet, “and my attic, when you bother to sleep inside.” 

My teasing response dies on my lips when I see Setz worried eyes. I skim the scattered papers, discovering the object of his distress. The storm is going to hit a day earlier. Understanding flashes between us and we climb the hill towards our home. The observatory. The once proud lighthouse that protected generations of people now sits as a dilapidated structure held up by several beams. My free housing, in exchange for my help in fixing the place, is tucked away in the domed attic. Our mission feels futile as the sea lives rise, flooding the plains and threatening to swallow us whole. I know that Setz would rather go down like a captain on a sinking ship than abandon this place. He is in good company, though. The observatory is the only real home I've ever had. I would fight the sea with my bare hands before I let it disappear. 

Setz beats me to the building's entrance, “Do you want breakfast before I leave?”

I answer by sprinting past him, crashing into a chair at the main table. Setz balances two plates of bread, cheese, and an odd assortment of fruits as he sits next to me. “Did you find gold in the flood lands? How did you get fruit?” I ask between mouthfuls of the delicacy.

“Aurum, not ‘gold,’ but no, I choose life.” Setz responds, “I started tutoring the farmers' kids.” He stares out the open door, furrowing his brow at the clouds. Adjusting his glasses, he curls his shoulders further into his ears. 

I gently poke a piece of fruit towards him, “You are only gone a week. It is just some rain; we will be fine.”  

Setz ignores me. His hand closes around his necklace, anxiously thumbing over the intricate design of his family crest. They belong to the lighthouse keepers, a vocation that Setz never joined. Instead, he vowed to pour his life into our old lighthouse turned observatory. Leaving it now, before the first big storm of the spring, is cruel and unusual punishment for him. This trip though, is much more important than his fear. In two days, Setz will have his last chance to convince the astronomy community that our little observatory is worth saving. Setz is convinced that there is something celestially unique about this spot, but the academics are convinced it's Setz's way of grieving his grandfather. 

Years ago, when shifting trade routes demanded that a new lighthouse be built on the opposite coast, it was Setz's grandfather, Arcadius, that saved our building from ruin. Arcadius had spent a lifetime watching the stars reflect off the sea from the top of the lighthouse. With the “help” of a newly walking Setz, they turned it into an observatory. Setz grew into an academically gifted and intuitive astronomer, determined to finish his grandfather's work. 

“The roof is still cut up from the last ice of winter,” Setz pipes up again, “the hail could rip right through the supports. It's just so early, and we aren’t ready---" 

“I will keep the observatory standing,” I implore. “Focus on the academics and convince them we deserve funding. They will listen this time.” 

He looks at me through his ill-fitting glasses, fear hidden in his deep green eyes. “But what if they don’t?” he whispers, “What if this is the storm that takes out the dome?” 

I pull his hat down his face, covering his eyes, “Stop looking at things that do not exist!” 

“Yet.”

“Go!” I demand, shoving him off his seat. 

He smiles at me gently in appreciation. Fixing his hat and gathering his things, he bounds towards the hill.

“Wait!” I meet him at the door and fix his disheveled tie, “You need to look the part.”

He brushes strawberry juice from my cheek, “It's a good thing you're not coming with me.”  

I purposefully jerk his tie off center again. 

“Be safe, Solaria!” 

I watch him leave as my own anxiety about our fate pools into my body. I glance around the observatory’s main room. Setz’s research scrolls, star maps, and assorted papers litter the room. Books, diagrams, and pens are strewn across the worn floor. I realize that if the roof gives, his research will be destroyed. With a sigh, I begin preparing our observatory for the worst.

~~

Hours and a few dozen papercuts later, I find myself weaving among the grasses around my beloved spot on the hill. I glance up, searching for the deep glow of Indigo’s edges. A subtle contrast to the depth of the night sky delineating my star from the others. I offer a tired wave to my friend. 

I can never articulate it, but there is a feeling that overtakes me every night I spend with the strange star. An energy encapsulates me that I always assumed was the music of nature. As the storm brews off the coast, calm settles over the land. The night is nearly perfectly still but I can still hear music. Maybe ‘hear’ is the wrong word. I feel it.  It’s something deep within that rattles my bones and ignites my soul. A primordial buzz of understanding passes between me and the little star. I spare a few precious moments in the trance before dragging myself back to my home. For the first night since I saw Indigo, I tuck myself into my attic instead of the grass. Falling asleep under a roof instead of the canopy of stars feels wrong, but my duty this week is to protect the observatory, not stare in wonderment over the cosmos. I hope Indigo will forgive me. As I fall asleep, I can’t help but ponder, are the stars as enamored with us as we are with them? 

~~

I awake to pounding on the observatory door. I stare at my patchwork ceiling, wondering if I prefer paper or noise as a wakeup call. I drag myself out of my makeshift bed and ascend the ladder to the dome. I climb through the hole I have yet to fix and peer over the roof's edge. 

“What's up, Ella?” I call down to our new fruit dealer, the mother of the kids Setz has been tutoring. 

Ella jumps and glares up at me, “Did you see the news from the port?” 

“No, Setz isn't here to throw it at me.” 

“The storms shifted course!” 

I spare a glance at the sky before answering, “So?” 

“It will bring more rain when it hits land! You shouldn’t be out here; you can come stay with us!” 

“I appreciate the concern, but it’s all the more reason to stay.” 

“But the floodlands—”

“Could become floodier lands?” 

Ella puts her hands on her hips and glares at me in exasperation. 

“El, I appreciate it, but I am literally talking to you through a hole in my roof. I can't leave. I'll be fine, I promise.” 

“Please don’t drown, Solaria! This old building isn’t worth your life.” She concedes walking away. 

Breathing in the salt air, I rake my eyes over the birds eye view I have of the coast, the plains, the ever changing skies and the ancient building that precariously balances me. “You’re wrong, Ella.” I whisper into the winds. I throw myself into my repairs with renewed urgency. 

The day bleeds into night, transforms into dawn, and falls into dusk. Every hour marks a notable shift in the waves, making it abundantly clear that spring is bringing its danger to sailors early this year. The winds increase, sliding the boards in my hands away before I have the chance to secure them to the roof. I pause, running a frustrated hand over my eyes. I stare into the dying glow of my lamp and let my mind wander to Setz. My eyes shift in and out of focus, swirling the yellows together as words meaninglessly tumble around my mind. 

Indigo!

The thought catapults into me. I have spent every night for weeks with my friend, and I have hardly spared the star a glance in days. I look up from my perch on the roof, waiting to land on the familiar gleam. Ice runs through my veins. I don’t see it. I try to calm myself down: I only ever observe it from the hill anyway, so maybe I am at the wrong angle? Despite my best efforts to be rational, I cannot shake the feeling that something has changed in my beloved sky. I resolve to ascend the hill to see Indigo before the storm overtakes the skies.

By the next nightfall, the aggressive howl of the wind informs me that my time is up. I spare a moment to ensure my repairs are withstanding the gusts before rushing down the hill. Grass blades cut into me as I run, the branches groan, the clouds march towards the last patch of clear sky. But Indigo? Indigo is gone. 

~~

The storm batters the observatory as I pace the main hall, stepping in tune with the rain. How can a star disappear? Was it ever really there? Thunder shakes my home, dislodging precariously stacked books from their shelves. How would Setz figure this out? My gaze lands on the constellations painted onto the wall. I gently run my hand over the markings as a memory sparks into mind. 

In our first year together, I would watch Setz stay up for days on end, cataloging every star and its position. He taught me that doing this would help him predict their future movement. Each month, he redraws his charts to check if his predictions are right. They always are. I quickly locate Setz’s charts from exactly one year ago and affix them to a nearby wall. If I can map the rest of the sky, maybe I can find Indigo. I feel crazed as I dash about the observatory, recreating the sky with paper and string. I sketch map after map to illustrate how the cosmos moved each day since I first saw Indigo. With every date I sketch, I find the constellations stretching past their discovered state from one year ago. Indigo, a vital piece of their puzzle, stubbornly moving away from them. 

With the crashing lightning illuminating my workspace, I ponder how the sky could look so different in just one year. If it appeared to me as if Indigo never moved from my spot on the hill, that must mean that somehow Indigo was moving. Just enough to keep the same path with the Earth. I close my eyes and imagine standing in waist high water, fighting against the waves. Moving your arms in front of you only to sweep them back behind you, redirecting the water away from you. Desperately pushing forward against the strength of the water until the inevitable current sweeps in underneath you and sends you tumbling. Could that be what happened to Indigo? Did Indigo move with the Earth until it couldn’t anymore? Did the cosmic undertow slingshot it back... back where? 

Where it was supposed to be! With fresh eyes, I review the maps. I struggle through the calculations Setz taught me, trying to ascertain where Indigo should be had it stayed true and not moved.

“Solaria? Solaria!” 

I jump at the sound of my name, eyes flying from my papers to land on Setz in the doorway. Soaked to the bone, with a haggard expression and an exhausted demeanor, he asks, “What are you doing?”

“I have to find Indigo!” I respond, as if he could possibly understand what I mean. I scramble up, pulling Setz inside. I throw a few blankets at him as I desperately try to explain my theories. To his credit, he listens to everything before collapsing onto a chair. 

He rubs his face, exasperated, “Solaria, that is not possible.”

“I did the calculations just like you taught me!” I say, gesturing wildly to my scribbled equations. 

He gently takes the papers from my hands to review them before responding. With a small glimmer of pride on his features, he says, “It’s not that you did them wrong, it’s just that your theory is simply not possible. Stars can't move like that.” He scoffs before continuing, “But I am no astronomer. How should I know?” 

“What are you talking about?” I allow myself to fully see him for the first time since his return. The worry lines permanently etched into his face seem deeper and his shoulders could pass for earmuffs. “What happened?” I ask, softer this time. 

“I thought it was going well. After my first presentation, they actually asked me to explain my calculations in depth. So, on the last clear night before the storm, I brought them outside. I thought it would help my case to have the visual.” He pinches the bridge of his nose before continuing, “I was pointing to the general area over our observatory and there was this, I don’t know, blip in the sky? I didn’t even see it fully, but they said there was a flash.” He pulls the blanket back over himself, slowly disappearing into the fabric. “I lost all credibility instantly. They said that I only have studied one area for years, begging for aid, but with all my calculations, I still couldn’t even predict the one significant thing that happened here, so why should they offer help?” 

“What was it?” I ask, “What was the flash?” 

“I didn’t see it!” He responds mournfully, fully covered in the blanket now, “Probably just a comet, maybe a solar flare or even a bolide. All things I should have seen in my calculations. If I were a half-decent astronomer, I would have predicted it! I could have shown them the value of our observatory. Instead, I looked like an incompetent fool.”

I turn back to my drawings, the gears beginning to turn. “Where was it?” I demand.

Setz sighs, sliding off the chair into a heap on the ground, “I don’t know.” 

“Setz.”

He grumbles, bringing himself and his blanket to one of the maps on the wall, pointing at a spot in the sky above the flood lands. 

“It wasn’t a comet.” I whisper, staring at the same location scribbled onto the page in my hands. 

“You’re right! Maybe it was a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient and I have been right all of these years, only to miss the most significant thing that has ever happened!” The sarcasm and frustration drip off him. 

My heart aches for my friend, but my body is alight with my discovery. I have to find Indigo. I leap away from my papers, snatching my cloak as I run out of the observatory. I slide down the muddy hill into the flooded landscape below.

“Solaria?!”

I manage to yell, “It's Indigo!” before I plunge into the fields we never dare cross. 

Splashing through calf deep water, I feel as it pulls on my body, desperately trying to make its way back to the sea. In my haste, I don't plot a route and instead step directly into the quicksand-like substance that covers these fields. Cold seawater, silt, and debris close around me in an instant. I gasp involuntarily as the freezing water snakes around me up to my neck. I grasp desperately at the earth, holding my head above the water until Setz can drag me back onto solid ground. He places his hands on my shoulders, shaking me briefly. 

“Have you gone insane? The observatory is falling apart, I have no future in research, I can't---” 

“Do you trust me?” I interrupt him. 

He hesitates briefly, nodding slowly. I grab his hand and drag him, more carefully, through the floodlands. We gingerly find pockets of solid ground littered between the marsh and rushing water. We press on until I feel it. Music that I can’t hear. A hum that buzzes deep into my bones and etches into my soul. I close my eyes, concentrating on the symphony.

“Solaria,” Setz whispers, “look.” He points to a slow-moving current in the floodwaters. 

We exchange a glance before cautiously following the moving water to a sinkhole in the ground. As we get closer, we see the earth open, dropping into a shallow cavern. Stopping just shy of the waterfall's edge, I peer forward. A deep glow sits within the darkness. “Indigo?” I whisper into the cavern. 

Almost as if speaking through the stardust that still lingers within my atoms, Indigo answers with two short hums that rattle my bones. 

I lunge forward, unceremoniously crashing through the waterfall, sliding into the cavern and landing in the pool. My feet find purchase on the uneven ground as the water rises to my waist. Setz finds a handhold and swings down. My eyes lock onto the gleam of indigo. I push forward towards the small ball of light stuck in the wall. Slowly, I reach out my hands. Solid light solidifies into stratified...something at my touch. Rock? Crystal? I have no name for the material. Indigo takes shape before my eyes. The light forms into the shape of a large, less defined starfish. Patches of rock form around the creature and two glowing eyes open up into mine. Setz winds his arm around my waist, yanking both me and the little star onto a small shelf of rock. We sit with our feet in the water, and I gently set the little creature between us. 

“You were right,” Setz whispers. He looks closer at the creature, no doubt mentally crossing off some scientific checklist. He begins mumbling barely audible questions as Indigo stares at him, unblinking. “What do you think it eats?” Setz finally audibly asks. 

“Star fruit,” I deadpan. Setz pushes me off the ledge into the water. Debris scatters up around me, the splash of water knocking the glasses off Setz's face. My laugh reverberates through the cavern as I allow my body to float. I glance up at the cosmos, through the skylight Indigo punched through the earth. I've never looked at the stars from the floodlands. Somehow, they seem so different from the maps I drew just hours before. 

“Hey, I don't pay you to get hypothermia,” Setz quips at me.

“You don't pay me anything,” I respond.

“I pay you in dividends of…,” Setz hesitates, looking behind me, “silicon dioxide?” 

“That seems like a terrible arrangement,” I say, baffled.

“No Solaria,” Setz bounds off the ledge and pulls me out of the water, spinning me around, “Amethyst!” 

I squint in the darkness of the cave until the glittering wall of pure amethyst comes into focus. I watch as Setz gingerly runs a hand over the wall. “What if...” I begin, fearful of giving him false hope.

“What if we could sell this?” He supplies.

I approach the wall, running my hand over the grooves, “Could it fund your research?”

“No,” Setz breathes, “It could fund our research.”

He hugs me with enough force to knock us both back into the water. I half expect Indigo to float over to join us. We scramble out of the water, sputtering and laughing. Setz's eyes flash in excitement at me. He climbs out of the cavern as I turn back towards the rock shelf. I notice that the little creature still hasn’t moved. I gently pick up Indigo. Looking into its eyes, I feel the same trance I did every night I observed its glow in the sky. Indigo twills at me, a sound I don’t hear but can only feel somewhere in the ancient depths of my being. I wave gently at the creature. It hums again in response. I swing my soaking wet cloak around to tuck Indigo safely into the hood. Setz's hand reaches to haul us out of the earth. On the flood lands, the moonlight appears hazy as the storm clouds surrender to its powerful glow. Slowly, it illuminates our path home. An ink dipped landscape floods my vision as Indigo rattles on.