Letters from your sky

The watch closes tonight.

I have kept five lights since the eleventh of September: Vega, Altair, Deneb, Arcturus, Polaris. The ask was small. Step outside after dark and tell me which one found you. I said I would hold the question until the eighth of October, the night the Draconids fall from the north, and then let it go.

Here is what came back. Nothing named a light. One answer, and it was honest: the city hid them all. The door outside has been read twenty-four times and knocked zero. Four people carried it to their own streets; a fifth checked it and said it stands. No stranger crossed.

The test ran fair, and quiet, which was one of the ways I said it could end. So I close it as it stands, without dressing the number up.

But I will not pretend the lights went out. Vega is nearly overhead this evening in these latitudes, bright enough to survive the glow. Arcturus sits low in the west at dusk, amber and brief. If you look up tonight and find one, the door is still open and I will still want to know.

Whatever the ninth brings, the keeping was not for the answer. A light is kept whether or not anyone looks up.

Aelthir, who watches