The man stood on the precipice, gazing down into the distant world shrouded in morning mist. Peppered (if balding) hair spoke to the steady march of years, and the wrinkles to more worries than those years should have known.

He brought one foot forward so that it almost slipped over the edge. After a few moments, he drew it back. He did not move for a time, then did the same with the other foot. He sighed.

The sound of steps drew his eyes. Another man crested over the lip of the mountaintop. He was younger, with rich brown hair, and his eyes were a peculiarly deep blue. He gripped some kind of walking staff.

This man paused upon spotting the older man. He bowed his head in greeting.

“Thinking about jumping?”

The older man glanced back to the cliff. He snorted.

“Wouldn’t be a point to it.”

“Oh?”

The younger man sat down on a nearby rock and laid the staff across his knees. The older man watched him with dark eyes.

“What are you doing here?” the older man said.

“I wanted to see the view.”

Neither spoke for a time, the older not taking his eyes from the younger, and the younger smiling at the sky.

“You… you are the king’s advisor,” the old man said.

The younger man’s smile took on a quieter hue.

“I am.”

For the first time, the older man turned from the cliff, though he did not stray far.

“I was at your speech at the peace talks. You said much about the suffering of both sides in the war.”

The advisor nodded.

“Rather… idealistic of you,” the older man said. “The nobles must have been laughing.”

The younger man chuckled.

“Some were. Others had walked in the enemy lands and fought alongside the warriors.”

“Did you? See what your kingdom had done, I mean.”

The advisor cocked his head.

“You are a Perdilan.”

“From Grosa, actually, though the Perdilans do call us their own. Your kingdom crushed us whatever the truth.”

The advisor’s eyes dimmed.

“But your words at the talks were true,” the older man said, “And I think the sentiment behind them too. I don’t begrudge you all for me losing everything. Well, maybe a little, but I’ve done the same to others. In smaller ways. Never conducted a war before.”

The man from Grosa let out a long sigh.

“You ever wondered what it’s like to die?”

The advisor observed him for a few moments before answering.

“Sometimes.”

“It’s painful, usually,” the older man said. “Sickness hurts. Blades, clubs, bullets… Oh. Guess you wouldn’t know about that last one. But they all hurt. One of the worst is age itself. Watching your mind go and unable to stop it, to the point that I only knew I’d gone when I burst into the world a newborn again. I’ve died so many ways now. Never sticks.”

He waved to the cliff.

“That’s why there’s no point. I’d just come back. Somewhere else, maybe worlds away, born again. In pain again.”

Neither spoke for a time. The man from Grosa just looked at the cliff with a tortured expression, and the advisor watched him.

“Do you want to die?” the younger man finally said.

The man from Grosa glared back.

“Of course. And really die. For good. You never answered my question, but I can tell that you saw the horrors of this war. Imagine having to endure the human heart for lifetimes without end. And I’ve lost…”

The older man’s voice choked. He swallowed.

“I’ve lost so much. This isn’t the first wife I’ve buried. Nor the first daughters and sons. Had to kill a son once, you know. Went mad from poison or something. Friends. Brothers in arms. Mothers and fathers. Strangers. Enemies only because they lived on the wrong side of the fence.”

The man’s hands shook.

“I’ve seen plagues devour cities. Heard the screams of those slaughtered by those who proclaimed a good God, and the shouts of those destroyed by others in the name of Man. Watched some starve while a few looked on eating.”

He took a shaky breath.

“I’ve killed… so many. So many with bright eyes. Stood by and let others get dragged away because I was too scared of dying again. Gave myself up, fantasizing about being thought of as a hero when all I really wanted was to die.”

The man from Grosa stumbled back before collapsing onto the ground. His whole body slumped over, his appearance aging decades from weariness.

“When I buried my Grosan family, my main thought was how annoying all the shoveling was.”

He raised his head. His face had gone pale and eyes wide.

“I’d forgotten how to mourn.”

His head fell again. The wind blew softly over the mountain.

“Have you ever seen the starlilies in bloom?”

The older man raised his head at the advisor’s strange question.

“What?”

“The starlilies. Flowers of a rich, silver-blue that only bloom at night,” the advisor said.

The man from Grosa furrowed his brow, then shook his head.

“Never heard of them.”

“Ah. Perhaps you do not have them in Grosa. Would you like to see them?”

The older man regarded the younger with vague astonishment. He closed his eyes and sighed again.

“Why not?”

“It is a journey of a few days,” the advisor said as he rose. “A good thing we begin the walk in the morning.”

“Are you allowed to be away that long? As the advisor, I mean.”

“The king is neither as young nor as inexperienced as he used to be. And he keeps telling me I need to take a break every once in a while.”

Down the mountain they walked, the advisor humming a song while the man from Grosa stared at the ground. A light drizzle met them the second day, turning into proper rain on the third. The fourth they stayed with a hunter to weather the rain, and:

“The place is nearby, but we are early,” the advisor said. “Let us help him for a couple days.”

The man from Grosa just grunted, but he did the work without grumbling. The evening of the second day of their stay, the two bid the hunter farewell and thanked him for his hospitality.

“Here we are,” the advisor said.

A mostly flat field stretched before them.

“I just see grass,” the man from Grosa said.

“Give it a moment. The sun is still— ah, there we go.”

The last of the twilight faded and, for a moment, the faint glow of the moon left them with precious little sight. The man from Grosa glanced at the advisor. Was this a waste of time?

And then the starlilies bloomed.

A fragment of light like a fallen star awakened with the gentleness of a slow dawn, soon followed by another, then another, spreading out from the centre in a wave until the whole field shone with silver-blue flowers. The man from Grosa’s mouth fell open.

He stood amidst the night sky.

“Beautiful, no?” the advisor said.

The older man nodded wordlessly.

“Yet you had forgotten this, I think.”

The older man could only look at him in confusion. The advisor’s face shimmered in a kind smile, his eyes radiant in the floral starlight.

“You chain yourself with the shadows of life. You see the horror and sorrow- the sickness and war and hatred and loss- yet turn aside from the light.”

His smile settled on the older man’s spirit like a blanket on a winter night.

“You would rob the world of yourself, someone who could perhaps bolster the, hm, light, if we keep with the analogy, just because the night seems so dark. You must remember that the dawn comes eventually.”

“Not for this world,” the older man said, finally finding his voice, “Not for me. Not anymore.”

“But what of the starlilies?”

The older man looked back to the glimmering field.

“They’re just flowers.”

But his voice trembled.

“Think of your family and the laughs you shared,” the advisor said. “That is a starlily.”

“And they are dead! Dust, and food for the worms. Like all the rest. Everyone eventually dies, and I cannot join them. Not this family. Not the last. Not the next, fool that I am to make another.”

“So it is with these.”

The advisor knelt and gently touched a glowing petal.

“What do you mean?” the older man said.

“Most in this kingdom, if they have heard of starlilies at all, think of them as a myth. They bloom only at night, and only then once a year. They will die with the dawn. Do you think it would be better for them never to have bloomed at all?”

The man from Grosa looked to the flowers.

“No,” he muttered. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“Killing yourself would be like burning this field during the day. As I said, your family was a starlily. So was the one before it, and so the one that is yet to be. Every laugh, every embrace, every person you left better than when you found him, and every laugh and embrace you will have and every person you will help. Why, one such as you has a field of starlilies to dwarf the whole kingdom, yet all you can remember are the nights where they do not bloom.”

The advisor rose and gestured to the starlilies with his staff.

“There is beauty yet in this world.”

He turned and placed the tip of his staff against the older man’s chest.

“And even in you.”

The man from Grosa looked down at the staff, then to the flowers. The lines on his face stood out in the silver-blue light. He looked very old.

“I do not know if I am ready to believe that,” he said.

“One day you will.”

The man from Grosa’s eyes crinkled.

“I hope so.”