The Stranger in the Scarlet Gown

She wore a scarlet dress and she danced among the stars. She was pretty, most would agree on that. A few might argue, but then again, everyone’s a critic. Her dress was made for her, sleek and elegant and bright enough to be fire. She would swirl through the constellations; her gown would spin like flames. Her hair chased after, just as scarlet. A smirk liked to play on her face, but a rather innocent one, like a child who knew she did something wrong.

They didn’t know what to make of her, the stars. She was as mysterious to them as they are to us. What were they to think, they wondered, of this dancer in the scarlet gown? Was she kind, was she tricksy? Would she prove a friend, or a foe? Was she anything more than an enigma? Or was her dress, her hair, her smirk, nothing more than a riddle for them to puzzle over? Strangest of all were her feet.

Hercules wore his sandals, Andromeda her silk slippers. Leo’s paws were covered in silken fur and Draco’s with stone-hard scales. Hers were bare. The stranger with the scarlet gown wore no shoes. No red slippers accompanied the dress, nor boots, nor sandals, nor high heels. She strode amongst the stars with nothing beneath her feet but the dome of the heavens. Moreover, hers feet were well-worn; they were traveler’s feet. Callouses crawled across her heels, scars stretched their pale fingers against skin. Memories of sand and silt, dirt and grass, the leaves of the forest and the snow of the mountains swirled around her feet, and followed in her footsteps, wherever she went.

The stars didn’t know what to make of her feet. They would find their eyes marching to them, wondering what mysteries they had seen, what troubles they had fled. Had they carried the stranger in the scarlet dress away from heartbreak? From deadly situations? As they had carried her through the meadows of happiness and the canyons of despair, had they carried her to the bed of lover? To the birth of a child? To the death of a parent? Had they crossed the world and seen adventures?

Orion clung to her arm, as her travel-worn feet carried her across the skies. She had charmed him immediately, and both seemed content with the situation. She strutted at the elbow of a great warrior, he held the arm of a beautiful woman, and all the stars stared in awe. The moon watched them, and the constellations envied them, and the sun squinted his great eyes at her burning beauty. One can only dream of what the humans on the blue-green planet below would have thought of the two of them, gallivanting across the vaulting heavens.

It came to be decided, with a unanimous vote amongst the constellations, that if they were to properly welcome their guest, they should hold a ball. Some hoped to win a dance with the stranger, others merely wanted to watch the beauty of her and her warrior waltzing across the heavens, yet others hoped to hear her story, and a few simply missed the fun of a good ball. Silver candles were lit, instruments—unlike any humans have ever seen—were dusted off, and the greatest halls of the cosmos were prepared for the dancers.

It began. The music started to play, and in moments tapping feet went to gallant foxtrots, to exuberant tangos, and of course to gliding waltzes. The strings sand, and the drums marched, and breathy flutes fluttered upon the solar wind. Even the best dancers stumbled as the stranger’s elegant movements made them forget the simplest of steps. When all the dancers fell still, however, and their expectant eyes fell heavy on her she realized what they wanted: her story. So, her floating feet slowed and stopped, and with her skirts splayed like a fan of fire, she sat on the glowing moonlit clouds. All the stars jostled around her, sitting in an arc before her like children waiting to be read their favorite story.

When she began, her voice drifted like the forgotten song that fills your dreams. She started with the ocean. She told of its beauty, its pillow crests and crystal depths. She spoke of its music, of the opera of its waves, of the songs which filled your heart with longing, and the whistle of its winds which set you free. She told of the notes that would wrap you up in their beauty, and hold your heart safe and close.

She assured all the stars that any husband who compared his wife to the ocean had no more brains than the village idiot. Next to the waves, she promised, any wife’s face was no more beautiful than that of a hag, no matter of her beauty among other women. She had always realized that, and her husband had too—for yes, indeed, she had shared her life with a husband, as well as a beautiful baby boy who took after both his mother and his father, but took after nothing more than the ocean next to which he had been born.

She told of a house—not large, nor fancy, but to her it was unique. This cottage, with its shutters white as shells and its doors sturdy as stone, had been her home. She explained of the room on the second floor, that looked right out across the waves. It had been hers, with her husband of course. Her words tenderly brushed the aging four-poster bed and the wardrobe that been her mother’s before her. With the hint of a smile she told of the quilt on the bed, which could never stay flat despite her best efforts, and the smells that would fill the room, marching up from the kitchen directly below, when her husband would cook her breakfast each morning.

She told them of the window, which she swore could tell what the day would be like. If, when she awoke, she saw gray through the window, she would struggle through the day. If there were a few clouds that drifted behind its pane then she would find the day uniquely average. Then, of course, there were the days where there would be nothing but blue, like a second ocean spilled across the sky, and those days were the best of all.

Then came the storm. Then came the fist of the ocean, brought down hard and fast onto her not-large, not-fancy house; onto the second floor room, with the aging bed and its wrinkled covers; onto her husband swimming in the waves and the downpour. It thundered, it rained, and she cried. It seemed to leave, she said, with as much force as it came, as if ashamed of what it had done, and just like that she was left a widow, with a child to raise by herself. Not even that lasted long, however. Her son was as much born of the ocean as of her and her husband, and soon he found himself, wandering away onto a ship, as soon as he was old enough to find a job there.

Left alone, she set out, but no destination made its home in her mind. No place called her name or promised to cradle her in its arms and keep her safe like he had, so she let herself be carried along wherever he feet would take her. She kept moving—never slowing, nor stopping—until one day the heartache became too strong. The storm had snatched away her heart and broken it in two, returning only one of the pieces when it stole her husband. The ocean did the same, when it took her boy from her. It was upon that day—when the little sliver of heart that fate had begrudged her cried out with so much anguish that she wanted to give up—that she found it.

It as a staircase. A shimmering and shinning coppery thing that bit deep into the soil and curved—sprouting like some climbing vine—racing toward the heavens.

The first step gave her hope, and the next did too. Step by step she climbed, and step by step she felt a glow welling up within her. More than that, step by step she felt the stolen heart finding its way back, creeping through her skin and muscle, crawling between her ribs, and making her whole again. It was only when the last sliver of sorrow left her soul and splinter of heart settled back into her chest that she stepped onto the top of the stairs. Then, with a whole heart within her, and hope held like a lantern before her, and a new scarlet dress—liked she’d dreamed of as a little girl—the stranger had stepped forth into the realm of the stars.

When the story was finished, she stood and took Orion’s arm, leading him out to dance. The music began again, but it didn’t sound quite as sweet as the waves from her tale. The starry women glided over the cosmos and clouds and nebulae, but none of them seemed quite as beautiful as the ocean on the world below. As for the stranger, she waltzed, and as she did, she wiped a tear from her eye and let it fall from the sky—like a raindrop of the storm that had stolen her husband; it fell into the waves, like the ones that had taken her child, and with that lone, final tear, she left her pain behind her, and all was forgiven.

The stars watched her with envy—but also with a glowing new respect for the stranger who had lost so much and yet continued on—while the sun stared on with pride, honored that he could be compared to such a person. The moon just sat there, a small grin on her face. She had, of course, known this stranger’s story all along, for these are the things that the moon knows.

The stars thought over her tale, and as they considered it—over the days and the weeks—they one by one decided they understood her. Just as the last constellation had accepted this realization, the stranger disappeared.

They searched the heavens for her, but found nothing, for all she had left behind was her story of love and of loss and her warrior, Orion, staring with longing at a staircase that led onward.