A Letter From Afar

Steep and winding, the road climbed from the God-Servant City up to the Sky Temple, its handrails carved over with clouds in fine and delicate detail. All around, as far as the eye could see, lay nothing but sky and a sea of clouds.

To walk upon it was to climb a stairway bound for heaven.

It stirred in the heart a reverence and an awe that no one could help but feel.

Star was climbing fast now. Her steps could not wait a moment longer.

Right now she wanted desperately to see that familiar figure and tell him her news. She was no longer queen.

At the God's Cup Flower Garden she found Polo crouched in a corner, fussing over the flowerpots like a child.

The sight of him carried her back all at once to the day she had first met Polo, and she could not help laughing.

Back then he had come bursting out of the Sun Cup flowerbeds without warning, and for one moment she had taken him for some monster and been startled half out of her wits.

Every road she had walked since, he had walked at her side, every step of the way. And in her hardest, most dangerous hours, it was always he who arrived in time to help her.

Quietly she crept up behind Polo, as though she meant to give him a fright of his own, and then spoke without warning.

"All this quiet really isn't like you."

Polo held up a finger. "Shh!"

"They're asleep."

To Polo, every one of these Sun Cups was alive. They had not yet become dream spirits and did not yet possess wisdom, but that made them no different from so many innocent, uncomprehending children.

Polo tiptoed out at Star's side, and only once they were outside did he lean close and whisper in her ear.

"What are you doing running up here all of a sudden? Aren't you supposed to be in council with them right now?"

Star smiled. "We're finished."

Polo brightened. "That fast?"

Star nodded. There was another meaning running beneath her words.

"Not just for now. I won't be sitting in council ever again."

"I'll have so much more time to spend with you now, Polo."

Without waiting for him to answer, she looked at him earnestly. "All these years I've kept you tied down here. It must have been so hard on you!"

Polo bobbed his head and swung his whole body from side to side, the very picture of someone enjoying himself immensely.

"I want to stay by your side. And I really am happy."

His eyebrows lifted, and a playful look crossed his face.

"Though... it really has been a little stifling."

Star spoke up suddenly. "Well then, let's go traveling and have an adventure together!"

Polo glanced at her, not believing her words at once. He took it for nothing more than an attempt to comfort him, and he laughed. "You're so busy. How would you ever get away?"

But Star went on, "I'm no longer queen. And I'm no longer the Sky Temple's priest either."

Polo froze. "Then what about the throne?"

Star shook her head. "I was never suited to rule. Not from the very beginning."

"I've done everything I was able to do. It's time to hand the Sky Temple's high priesthood and the throne to someone younger, someone better suited to them."

Laughing, she threw her arms around Polo and pressed close against him.

"Haven't you always said you wanted to travel the world outside and go on adventures? That you wanted to see what this world is really like?"

"From now on, we're free."

"The throne and the priesthood don't bind me anymore. I don't have to spend every day buried in work."

"From now on, I'll be by your side every single day. Wherever you want to go, we'll go there."

For a long moment Polo only looked at Star, saying nothing at all.

He was moved. And more than that, he was happier than he could measure.

The smile spread across his face little by little, like sunlight falling in slow, gathering rays, warm and radiant.

"So when do we set out?"

Star had already let go of everything. Now there was nothing in her eyes but Polo.

"Whenever you want to leave, that's when we go."

Polo danced with glee, the shapes of his cupped hands lifting beneath his golden robe as he spun Star round and round.

"Then let's go right now!"

Star smiled and nodded. "Right now, then."

Polo laughed heartily. "The queen's story is over. Now begins the story of Star and Polo's travels."

"We'll go together to the ends of the world no one has ever reached, to see the most magnificent sights, and have the greatest adventure of all."

Star said, "Wherever we go, as long as you're by my side, that's all I need."

Polo took Star's hand. Together they turned into a burst of starlight and were gone from the Sky Temple's God's Cup Flower Garden.

The starlight streaked away across the sky and faded into the distance.

Legend has it that someone once saw two figures, one gold and one starry silver, running across the surface of the sea. Someone atop a volcano saw a dreamlike gold and silver light circling a burning meteor as it fell.

Merchants on the road met two strange travelers and listened to them tell legendary tales, though afterward they could never quite recall what either traveler had looked like.

The story of Queen Star and the Divine Messenger lived on forever, told across Yinsai and every land of the trilobite men.

Wherever something new was happening in the world, there the two of them were said to be.

God-Given Land

Somewhere far away a dreaming bubble burst, and the mysterious power inside it crossed the ocean and came at last to the legendary kingdom of God Yinsai.

Ever since Polo created the dream spirits, this God-Given Land had grown lively too.

Perhaps these dream spirits had inherited more than Polo's blood of myth. His innocent, romantic nature seemed to have come down to them as well. All day long they did nothing but play and frolic, and never once knew what it meant to worry.

They darted back and forth through the flower seas of the God-Given Land, drifting along the shore and through the sky. The one thing they feared above all else was Shelly.

"Hehe!"

"Come and catch me!"

"No way, I'm going to sleep."

"I've got to go deliver a letter to the temple." A dreaming bubble had welled up without warning inside one dream spirit's flower cup. It gave a start, then turned to look toward the temple.

"Is that terrifying monster in the temple too?" The other dream spirits pulled their heads down in fear.

It wasn't that they were afraid to come before God. What they feared was the Ruhe Beast King who prowled the temple.

This dream spirit crept toward the temple gate as though venturing into a land of death, trembling at every step, and poked its head cautiously inside to look.

"Huh!"

"Not here!"

Relief had only just brightened the dream spirit's face when a slender hand shot out from one side and seized it, dragging it dangling through the air until it came to stand before God.

The blooming flower cup lifted up a dreaming, illusory bubble, and the bubble swelled larger and larger until it measured more than a meter across.

"God, Your messenger comes before You."

Inside the dream bubble, images of Polo and Star took shape.

Then scene after breathtaking scene appeared within the vision.

A city caught in a driving storm. Trilobite men fishing the shallows beneath a setting sun. A volcano in eruption. A mirage of clouds rolling over the desert, glimpsed by a caravan crossing the sands.

Every manner of living thing, in every guise. A desolate world made wonderful only because it held life within it.

Beside the volcanoes and the mirages, life itself was the world's greatest miracle.

And in every one of these scenes, Polo and Star were there.

At the very end, Polo and Star bowed before God. "O Great God."

"This is a gift Polo offers You. Polo cannot travel at Your side, but he can still be God's eyes."

"God, the world outside is truly wonderful!"

White light spilled outward from within the divine statue, and in that light a shadow slowly opened its eyes and cast its gaze down upon the shifting images inside the dreaming bubble.

"Has the world outside already become like this?"