"Panayos' inn…" Al-Aqar mumbled to himself as he stopped in front of a small, seemingly quite old and worn-out establishment. He tilted his head back, looking up at the wooden sign that creaked in the wind.
He didn't know much about this little town of Medya where he had found himself. The only reason he'd ever set foot here was tonight's Eclipse. Apparently, Starshka Hill was the perfect place to watch tonight's spectacle.
For the first time in five hundred long years, the Great Meteor Shower would align with the Eclipse of the Blood Moon and its two smaller sisters, and join them in crowning the night skies of the Slavoya Bubble.
Al-Aqar had made quite a long trip for this occasion. Hitched rides, passed through portals, walked until his boots wore thin… but, well…
What else could one expect from a man blessed by the Astryx constellation?
In this world, the stars and the moons and the drifting planets were the things that gave all the charkezi their strange powers.
Technically, every soul born under the sky was blessed by a star, but everything depended on whether their constellation would actually awaken within them. Usually, it awoke by the time a child reached sixteen.
But Al-Aqar's power awakened when he was only a little boy of five years old. He was considered a true prodigy of Astryx—the constellation of seers and lonely prophets, the ones who understood the hidden language of the skies.
So it was no wonder at all that he had traveled miles and miles across the dirt and night skies just to see tonight's event. It wasn't just a trip for pleasure, though.
The last time this happened, five hundred years ago, it resulted in the awakening of the Eclipsion constellation.
There was no way for any man to predict if the same thing would happen tonight under the red moonlight, or even more importantly, if such an awakening would be a good thing for the world, or a very, very bad one.
And in the end, why would anything of importance happen on Starshka Hill?
All Al-Aqar knew was that the idea of going took over him, and he couldn't shake it off until he'd packed his things and set out on the journey. Fate would lead him where it saw fit.
Well… he should at least get some rest before the Eclipse.
"Hello?" Al-Aqar called out as he entered the inn, his voice echoing in the wood.
It was a small, tired establishment of two floors. The ground floor held a few tables and a bar made of dark wood stained with years of spilled drinks. Stairs of narrow planks led up to the second floor, where the sleeping rooms waited in the shadows.
"Hello," a voice startled him.
His heart jumped. Al-Aqar turned his head and noticed an old man sitting at a corner table, showing a toothless grin while he smoked a cigarette. Gray ash fell like snow onto his old newspapers.
"Greetings," Al-Aqar said, recovering his breath and offering a polite smile. "Are you a local?"
"Yep. And you're not."
"An incredible observation, sir," Al-Aqar laughed as he approached the man. "May I know where the good owner is hiding? He does not appear to be here to greet the travelers."
"He's at the graveyard, charkezi man."
Al-Aqar blinked. then he let out a little chuckle.
But the old man started laughing as well, dryly. "I mean it. Panayos has been dead for fifteen years now. His wife, Dyana, is the one running this inn and keeping the roof from falling."
Curious and feeling the weight of his journey in his legs, Al-Aqar sat across from the man and kept his smile. "Really? And where can I find this lady?"
The answer came only seconds later from above.
"DIKO MAYA, IF YOU DON'T PUT ME IN THE GRAVE TODAY, I'LL PUT YOU THERE!" A scream was heard from the floor above, followed by the heavy, rhythmic thumps of someone running.
The old man grinned at Al-Aqar, who simply leaned back in his wooden chair and watched the ceiling shake.
"Ah. I see," Al-Aqar smiled.
"Come here, Xenia!" Dyana screamed as Xenia's feet flew down the hallway, her heart drumming against her ribs. "Oh sveti, you will be the absolute demise of me, you little brat!"
"If you want me to be your demise, you will first need to catch me!" Xenia yelled back.
It was not fair at all; it was her sixteenth birthday, and she didn't even get any gifts. But who cared for gifts… she only wanted one, and it cost nothing, either!
So why, why couldn't she just go out and watch the stars tonight? The Eclipse was supposed to happen—the great lunar eclipse—along with the shower of falling stars, and yet Xenia was caged like a bird.
And she could not even use the old argument of 'everyone else is going,' because in this village of Medya, nobody went out to watch the stars. It was a taboo… a dark superstition that kept every window shuttered and every door bolted.
What was everyone so scared of?!
"It's just a moon! What are you so scared of, tesha? That it will open its mouth and swallow me whole?!" Xenia yelled as she ducked into one of the guest rooms. Quickly, she turned the key to lock the door and leaned her whole weight against it, panting for air.
"You foolish, foolish child!" Dyana screamed from the other side, and Xenia heard the jingle of the heavy keys being pulled off her aunt's leather belt. "You think a simple lock can keep me out? Xenia, get out this instant before I have to drag you out by the ears!"
Xenia scrambled and ran toward the window; she knew she could get out that way, for she had done it many times before…
But her aunt was much quicker than she looked. "Aha! Here it is…"
The door flew open with a bang and Dyana hissed like a cat when she saw her niece with one hand already on the window frame.
A bulky, wide woman, Dyana was usually slow, but… if she caught you… her face made Xenia jump, skipping a heartbeat.
And that one heartbeat was enough time for her aunt to reach out and grab her arm with a grip like iron.
"Let me go, tesha!" Xenia screamed, twisting in the air.
"If I said no, then I said no, you foolish girl!" Dyana groaned with effort, tugging Xenia away from the window and toward the dark center of the room. "Foolish and stupid, that is all you are! All the sveti in the sky won't help my poor soul now! It will lift up and go straight to the Heavens because you have worried me to death!"
Xenia turned around with a deep, dark frown on her face. Her black eyes were sharp and they matched the messy tumble of her dark hair, and she almost always wore a frown… a smile was a rare thing to grace her lips. Perhaps she had learned such hardness from her aunt, or perhaps from the village itself.
"Mom would let me go," she hissed.
Dyana froze and stared at her for a few long seconds, her breath coming in heavy rasps. She looked at the girl's face as if searching for a ghost before finally turning around to leave the room.
"No she wouldn't, diko maya," the older woman said, her voice suddenly very tired and very soft. "She wouldn't."
Al-Aqar patiently listened as heavy footsteps thumped down the wooden stairs.
"Is this par for the course?" He turned to the local, who just smiled in response. That was all the answer Al-Aqar needed.
Moments later, heavy footsteps echoed through the wooden hall, descending the creaking stairs. Al-Aqar looked up to see a fat older woman with gray hair tightly bound in a bun.
"Ah, Dyana, you have a guest." The local man pointed at Al-Aqar, who patiently smiled. "A charkezi, too."
Dyana's face immediately turned into a scowl as she squinted at Al-Aqar. He could see hatred in her eyes, disappointment and anger; perhaps even disgust.
"You might be the only tavern owner I've ever met who's unhappy about having a customer," the local man snarked.
"Please, I don't bite. There is nothing to fear." Al-Aqar bowed.
"I don't fear any of you, charkezi man," Dyana spat. "Nor your strange and cursed powers. Don't try anything in my tavern and I won't call a mob on you."
"I'm not of the violent sort."
"You might not be, but I am. You want a room?"
Al-Aqar nodded. "Just for two nights. I'll be out of your hair then."
"Good." Dyana turned around to look for the keys, before turning back. "Here, room twenty-one. We don't serve breakfast, just lunch and dinner."
"Oh, my stomach is quite compact."
"I don't care about your stomach."
Al-Aqar stared at her as she took her leave into the depths of the tavern's kitchen. He looked around the tavern… it did not hold a holy emblem of any constellation.
"Does she know Charka could fine her for not keeping an emblem?"
"Charka holds no power here," the local man said. "You'd do well to remember that, charkezi man."