Evening.

Saturday, Sept. 14

To be a centaur is to never know silence. This is a simple truth of life.

The concept, in fact, is so alien to them that no centaur language has a word for it, because how can there be no sound when the stars are always singing?

How can there be... silence, when the very world thrummed and resonated with a melody as surreal as it was familiar?

What would such a world even be like?

Arden did not know the answers to any of those questions, but on nights like these when the stars hummed louder than usual with the weight of destiny, she wondered.

“Mars is bright tonight,” Firenze said as he walked over to join her, his hooves silent in the soft forest soil.

At his words, a human would be likely to seek out the red planet in the night sky to see if it glowed any brighter tonight than it usually did, but Arden was not human.

“Burning its last,” she agreed.

There was quiet between the two for a time, as they watched the wizards in their half-burnt village far away from their perch at the top of a large hill.

The cursed fire had been restrained and extinguished long ago, but the scar of its gluttony remained.

Arden suspected it would mark the land for a long time.

“It is a remarkable thing,” Firenze said.

Despite that his eyes were trained on the human village far away, Arden knew he spoke of something else.

“The Song, changed,” Firenze continued, seeming unable to find the words with which to express the awe he felt.

Finally, the centaur asked, “What are they like?”

Arden barely managed to restrain herself from sighing. She’d known this was inevitable.

“They are children,” Arden said.

“Children for whom The Song has changed,” Firenze countered, and Arden barely succeeded in holding back her sigh a second time.

This was why the Herd-mother had banned Firenze from seeking out the children again.

“Your adoration of humans is unbecoming, Firenze,” Bane groused, coming to stand by Arden’s other side, and the centauride failed to hold back her sigh this time.

Perfect, yet another debate that would likely see her playing moderator before long.

Firenze’s reply to Bane was prompt and calm as always; “And your blind hatred of them is short-sighted, Bane.”

Bane scoffed. “There is nothing blind about my observations, Firenze,” Bane said, then pointed at the human village below. “My eyes see just fine.”

Firenze did not back down. “I have never said that they are without flaws,” he said, and Bane snorted, “simply that we should not let ourselves look past their positives for them.

“They are gifted, Bane.”

Bane let out a mirthless laugh. “Hearing broken pieces of The Song that they can barely comprehend is not a gift, brother.”

“And we are any better?” Firenze queried, and to that Bane had no rebuttal, because the red-haired centaur was right; yes, centaurs, all of them, possessed the ability to hear The Song of the Stars better than the most gifted human “seer”, but it was one thing to perceive a thing, and another entirely to comprehend it.

Oftentimes, Arden knew, centaurs were just as lost to the messages of The Song as any human. Not until they came to pass.

In the lull in the argument, Bane must have thought up some other point to make, but as he began to speak The Song crescendoed.

All three centaurs looked up.

“Mars is dead,” Firenze said.

“Good riddance,” Bane spat.

“Saturn may be worse,” Arden pointed out, and Bane’s lips curled in disgust.

“Humans,” he muttered, the word coming out like a vile curse.

Firenze, of course, could not let that go, and just like that the well-worn argument between Firenze and Bane continued as the stars quieted, but never stopped singing, about Hermione Granger and Harry Potter.