Margarita Lambert and Cristina Brown

Morning came to the province of Cobalt. The rays of Rigel began to illuminate a road decorated with cornfields to its left and small brick houses to the right. A little girl was watching the houses. They were small and gray; the doors weren't made of wood; most of them were sheets of metal or fabric. They looked very small and surely lacked basic services like water and electricity.

That didn't worry the girl looking at the landscape. For her, the journey was much more exciting, imagining the stories she could create alongside her grandmother.

"Grandma, look!" the girl shouted with excitement, pointing at the landscape. 

She had seen some horses and wanted her grandmother to see them too.
The girl's grandmother woke up annoyed. She had had a horrible night, and the last thing she wanted was to be awakened by her granddaughter's shouts. The lady didn't scold her—not with words—but with a piercing look that made the girl sit down, somewhat sad.

"Cristina, please, shut up!,” a woman got up from her seat and looked at her daughter, who was already about to cry.

Cristina felt a few pats on her head that made her start crying. She began to complain that she only wanted to show her grandmother some pretty black horses with white spots. The mother picked up her four-year-old daughter and sat with her so she wouldn't cry. She didn't want the other passengers to wake up angry.

After a few moments, Cristina's grandmother held her and began to sing to her so she would forget the anger, the bitterness she had just experienced. After a couple of songs, the grandmother explained to her that she must behave, that she must stay silent when the adults are asleep.

"It's not nice to be woken up by shouts, do you understand, right?” the grandmother told her granddaughter calmly.

The girl nodded happily, and both of them started singing softly again while the morning warmed the bus and the people on the bus began to wake up. The Brown family—made up of Mrs. Margarita (the grandmother), her son John, and her daughter-in-law Camila—were traveling along with their daughter Cristina toward an uncertain destination. They had fled their province, South Cape, because of a war between witch clans that forced them to escape.

John was already fed up with this. Magic, witches, and the wars they caused only made life more difficult for the “Magic-less“ like his family who, detached from magic, tried to live a peaceful life. John made a decision: he didn't want his daughter growing up surrounded by magic problems. He wanted her to have a normal life, like the one he had as a child.

A life where she only had to worry about playing, making friends, studying, and growing up. That's how it should be. He had forbidden his own mother to stop praying to the stars as they never cared about them in that way. Margarita had obeyed him to avoid more fights. She herself knew that magic was dangerous. It had taken away her daughter—John's older sister.

Secretly, without her son realizing it, she sill talk to Cristina about the stars, the legends people tell about them, and stories about how they can protect people who trust in their power. There are dangerous stars that only cause harm. But at the same time, there are stars that bless, that protect.

"No matter what your father says, Cristy," Margarita told her granddaughter one night.

The bus stopped at a gas station. The girl's parents were asleep, and the driver had told the passengers they could get out for 15 minutes. Grandmother and granddaughter watched the star-filled sky. The Orion Arm could even be seen in the sky, which fascinated the girl.

"Which star can I pray to, grandmother?" the girl asked. She was looking at the sky were full of stars. The girl didn't know where to begin.

"Not all stars listen," Margarita began to explain. "Many of them are just ornaments in the sky, my child."

Margarita began to search for a constellation and found it in the western sky: the Golden Gem constellation. It did indeed look like a crown, and in the center a bright white star illuminated and decorated the constellation. Margarita pointed it out for her grandchild, and although it took her some effort to find the star, the girl finally found it and pointed at it.

"That star is named Helios," Margarita explained to her granddaughter, who was listening. "It's the star you can trust; it will listen to you. Always benevolent and patient with those who believe and trust in it."

Cristina soon understood that her father didn't like her grandmother's tales and songs. He saw them as useless for the girl and even considered them a distraction. Margarita argued with her son about the matter. Cristina was only five years old; she needed the stories, the songs. It was that or face her reality.

John couldn't forbid his mother from singing, and soon he saw his daughter singing too, while his wife calmed him down. Singing was a game for his daughter. To keep her from singing, John one day gave his daughter some colored pencils and a notebook.
"There are times when silence is necessary," John explained to his daughter, who was looking at the box of pencils and the notebook. "There you can draw your grandmother's stories."

Cristina was excited about her new supplies, and from that day on she drew and painted the stories her grandmother told her. She drew the stars, the princesses from her grandmother's songs, and sometimes she created landscapes and characters that she would later explain to her grandmother.

"She is the Dawn Princess," Cristina commented once, showing the drawing of a princess with orange hair, a blue dress, and white skin. "She is in charge of helping Rigel rise and illuminate the sky with her light."

When Cristina was this excited and happy, Margarita thought she saw small sparkles, tiny stars emanating from her granddaughter, and even from the paper. As if it were fairy dust. It was strange. Sometimes it combined with a kind of bubbles dancing around the girl. She figured she was just seeing things from exhaustion.

After several days, the Brown family finally arrived at their destination: a farm named Sweet Scent. The place was dedicated to sheep farming. It was one of the largest wool producers in the province.

John had gotten a job as the owner's assistant for herding sheep, in addition to securing employment for his wife and mother. Both women dedicated to cooking and cleaning, while Cristina had begun learning to read and write. During the afternoons, the girl started taking sewing classes.

The Brown family spent four years on that farm—something that benefited them. John even began dreaming of going to the capital of Cobalt to run one of the clothing stores owned by the farm's owner.

"Each of us," he told his wife and mother one night—Cristina was already asleep in the small room the four of them shared. “We will save at least 15% our salary.”

"Is that much really necessary?" said his wife. She didn't even know how much 15% of her salary was.

And counting the rent for the room where they slept, the clothes for the girl who was growing up way too fast, and the food... She thought that maybe in about 10 years she would manage to save what her husband wanted.

"I don't want to work for that long," the woman remarked with a tired sigh.

"If we save that amount for the next 2 years we will soon success.” John explained, "that way we can move to Brandt. We must make an effort."

During that time, Cristina's father also managed to keep his daughter away from contact with magic and with witches that only cause pain, war and war. No one believed in magic in that farm and, although there were rumors of war, fights, and inexplicable occurrences, nothing ever came close to the place where they worked.

When Cristina turned nine, and with the near success of John’s goal savings, a sudden an epidemic reached Sweet Scent. The owner fell gravely ill. The owner's wife, to avoid financial losses, avoided the subject and even ignored her employees' symptoms. She didn't want to spend money on them except for specific people. John and his family were replaceable.

Margarita felt terrified when her son and her daughter-in-law developed symptoms: those tremors, muscle pain, and pale skin. Begging for forgiveness and wanting to save her granddaughter, she fled from there. She took the family's savings and escaped one night with the girl in her arms.