I remember the night the strangers from the stars visited our village.

In silver vessels wreathed with lights they descended. Their eyes were many and dark and full of stars, and their hands were long and gentle. They sang with voices that could not be heard save it be through echoes when standing in a corner, and they taught many things through words that could only be comprehended by the yielding of one’s heart to the song.

I remember the songs of the visitors from the stars.

They remained with us a fortnight. In the days they slept in their vessels, and in the nights they taught us through their songs as we stood in our homes. They sang that every star was a world unto itself, and that each had a voice and a song. These they sang: exultant songs of stars white and silver, somber songs of stars blue and green, and the looming, dreadful song of a star red and dark beyond the sight of our sky. They told that the blanket of stars over our world showed but few of all there were to be seen, and that between every star exists a path that spans millennia. By diagrams and by song, they showed how these paths may be found by going at right angles with every face of a globe at once.

I remember their song. I remember their teachings and the hope to reach the heavens.

They showed us the way to ascend the skies through diagrams drawn in the air with their delicate fingers. As they drew, the images appeared in our minds, and we comprehended their every detail in the depths of our hearts. They told that to ascend beyond the sky and to traverse the paths between stars, one must move as slowly as possible, and then go on to move even more slowly than that. One may then retrograde into the fastest of beings and traverse the millennia that separate the stars in an instant.

I remember their grace and wonder. I also remember the horror of the dreams.

As we heard their songs each night, we began to dream, and with the dreams came the screams, and with the screams came blood. The blood of the magistrate was spilt first, then that of the priest and the deacon. Then the wise woman and her apprentice were drawn from their hut in the Delfwood and hanged in the square. The red blood of the village was soon followed by the magenta-blue of the strangers. Dreadful were their screams, and dreadful now is every corner in every home. None now linger in corners, though none can tell why.

I remember how the strangers left, and how I wept.

They retreated to their vessels after those dreadful nights when their blood was spilt and their screams filled the corners with mind-wrenching echoes. They ascended as streaks of silver, then vanished into the stars. Thereafter did our dreams grow quiet, and as the dreams went, so too went the screams, and with the screams went also the wonders they had shown and the knowledge they had sung. The flow of blood ceased in my village, and all memory of its cause and occurrence left every mind.

Every mind but mine, for I yet remember the night the strangers visited from the stars above.

I remember why we fear the corners of every home, why a new magistrate and priest and deacon were appointed in a day, why none visit the wise woman’s hut or even whose hut it was. I alone remember the apprentice, that she was the miller’s daughter. I yet remember also how to reach the stars and how to traverse the paths between them.

I alone remember, and for this, I have not seen sun nor star for a fortnight from within the walls of my cage. The dark of a dungeon is my lot, for I dared to remember, dared to weep, and dared to remind. So it is that blind darkness is my sight, and drear stone my only companion.

But on some nights when it is quiet and I can dream waking, I can hear their voices still in the corners of my cage. I pace my cell as slowly as I may, and I think that perhaps one day, I may go so slow as to ascend to the stars. One day, I may ascend to visit those who once descended to visit us.

One day, perhaps. Until then, I will remember them alone.

The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by the odd mental meanderings borne of listening to dungeon synth while suffering from a common cold. Share this dreadful tale with your friends, and consider supporting this content’s creation on Patreon. All proceeds go toward teaching primitive civilizations how to walk slower than is physically possible. Really.