In the Shadow of Orion, part 1

London

1910

The night fell over the city, and fog curled and twisted against the sloped rooftops of Bloomsbury. Somewhere below, the clatter of carriage wheels echoed faintly through the damp, gaslit streets, but up here—on the moss-flecked slate of her family’s townhouse—Lily Monroe breathed a different air.

She pulled her shawl tighter and eased onto the familiar patch of rooftop where a crooked chimney cast long shadows like pointing fingers. Her skirts brushed against the brick as she settled, knees pulled close, and opened the dog-eared volume of Herschel’s Celestial Treatise. Above her, the sky opened like an ancient book, dark and waiting to be read.

London’s haze dimmed most of the heavens, but Lily had learned the dance of the clouds. She knew which nights would yield their hidden stars. Tonight, the veil was thin.

“There you are,” she whispered as Orion’s belt shimmered into view. Her lips tilted in a smile, reverent and wistful.

The rooftop had long been her sanctuary—higher than the gaslamps, above her mother’s sighs and her brother’s endless talk of trade and trains. Here, the air smelled of soot and secrets, of forgotten things the stars might remember. Lily tipped her head back and let the silence wrap around her. It wasn’t just a love of astronomy that brought her here. It was a yearning deep in her soul to know more.

She traced constellations with a gloved finger held aloft: Cassiopeia, proud and queenly; Lyra, small and melodic; and, always, Orion—her favorite. Not for the hunter’s tale, but for the way he seemed forever caught mid-stride, chasing something just out of reach.

“A bit like me,” she murmured to him, to the sky, to herself.

Some nights, she imagined the stars listening. Some nights, she swore they answered—not with words, but with a feeling, as if the cosmos bent a fraction closer just for her.

And tonight? The air felt charged, not with London’s usual soot-laced damp, but with something finer—something other. Lily closed her eyes, the worn edges of her book still warm in her lap, and let the hush settle deep in her chest.

She did not yet know that the stars had heard her longing. That across impossible distances, something bright and ancient was moving toward her. But she sensed it, perhaps, in the hush between the chiming of clocks, in the way Orion’s belt glimmered more fiercely than usual.

“Tell me your secrets,” she whispered.

And somewhere, high above the gaslight haze, something stirred.

A breathless stillness settled over the rooftop, deeper than the usual hush of midnight. The city’s distant murmur fell away, as though the world were holding its breath. Lily felt the hairs on her arms rise beneath her shawl.

Then she saw a shimmer.

A single point of light in the sky pulsed. It brightened not like a star but like something alive, responding to her whisper, her longing. She sat up straighter, heart hammering. The glow grew, warm and golden, not harsh like lightning nor cold like starlight. It fell from Orion’s belt—no, from Orion himself—a ray like a thread descending toward her, weaving its way through the fog until it touched the rooftop at her feet.

The air glimmered, and the thread unwound into a form.

A tall figure stepped into being, not quite solid and yet more present than anything Lily had ever known. He was robed in light and shadow, his hair black as the void between stars, and his eyes—his eyes held nebulae and novas, colors she had no names for. They shifted like galaxies turning through eons.

Lily dreams of the stars

“Lily Monroe,” he said, and his voice was both musical and deep. “I have heard the quiet call of your soul. So often you look to the sky, and I—well, I look back.”

Lily could not speak at first. She could only stare, trembling, her book forgotten in her lap.

“You… you are him, aren’t you?” she whispered. “Orion. The Hunter in the stars.”

“I was that once. Now I am a traveler of the firmament. A witness to beauty… and sorrow. But never have I seen a heart so steadfast in its yearning.” His gaze softened, and he extended a hand—long fingers trailing a soft glow, like the lingering tail of a comet. “Come with me, Lily. I will show you what lies beyond the veil. Let your soul touch the places it dreams of.”

She should have been frightened. Any sensible girl would be. But Lily was not ruled by sense. She had always been ruled by wonder.

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “Show me.”

The moment her fingers met his, the rooftop fell away in a swirl of stars and wind. Her shawl fluttered like wings, and her skirts rippled as if underwater. London vanished beneath them like ink spilling from a quill, and above… above stretched the cosmos in unimaginable glory.

They rose through layers of air and aurora, past the moon’s pale, watchful eye, past rings of ice and flame. Planets swept by in grand, slow arcs. Star clusters bloomed like celestial gardens. They danced through the tail of a comet, laughter spilling from her as she clung to his hand, weightless and wide-eyed.

She was no longer just Lily Monroe of London, daughter of modest means and quiet nights. She was Lily of the Stars.

And she had taken her first step into the infinite.

***

The stars parted like curtains as Orion guided Lily across the firmament. She felt neither cold nor breathless in this strange place. Her body, so often weighed by earthly cares, felt light, buoyed by something greater—dream, perhaps, or destiny.

Their descent began not toward a planet, but toward a great bloom of color in the distance—a nebula pulsing in hues of lilac and rose, gold and jade. As they passed through its folds, she gasped. The light was not harsh but soft and fragrant, like petals of flame. From within its heart emerged a great sphere, a world cradled by the wings of the nebula like a pearl in the curl of a shell.

Orion spoke low beside her, “This place is called Elathria. It is not known to your astronomers. It blooms only for those who come seeking wonder.”

The world shimmered beneath them, its surface smooth and rippling like a lake of living crystal. When they landed, her feet touched something firm yet yielding—like moss made of glass. She gazed around in awe. Great gardens unfolded in every direction, sculpted not by hands but by the will of the stars themselves. Trees rose in curling spirals of translucent gold, their leaves glinting like emerald flame. Vines of opaline light twisted through the air, singing in tones Lily felt more than heard.

She took a step, and the surface chimed beneath her boot—high, delicate notes like a thousand crystal bells.

“Is this a dream?” she asked softly, afraid to speak too loudly.

“No,” Orion said. “This is real in a way humans cannot understand. Here, beauty is not tempered by decay. Time flows differently. Emotion becomes creation. The gardens respond to what you feel.”

As if in answer, a nearby bloom—a towering flower of cobalt and silver—opened with a sigh. Its petals shimmered, and at its center floated a sphere, like a dew-drop suspended mid-fall.

Lily stepped closer, heart racing with reverent fear. The orb revealed a memory—her childhood self, standing barefoot in a muddy London garden, peering up through a crack in the clouds, her eyes alight with wonder. She gasped.

“It knows me.”

“It reflects you,” Orion said. “This is a world of echoes. Of dreams unspoken and truths hidden even from ourselves. Here, you will see not only the stars, Lily, but yourself among them.”

She wandered slowly, breath catching at every turn. Birds of pure light flitted overhead, trailing sparkles behind them. Pools of starlight lapped gently in hollowed crystal basins. She passed beneath a tree that rang with laughter—her own, from years long past.

When she turned to Orion, her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “It’s…it’s so beautiful. I’ve never felt anything like this. As if…as if I matter to the universe.”

“You do,” he said, touching her shoulder with a gentleness that made her chest ache. “Your wonder gave this world shape, Lily. You are not a visitor. You are a creator.”

She smiled, dazed, and spun once beneath the boughs of a star-glass willow. “Then let me learn more. Show me everything.”

And so he led her deeper into the gardens of Elathria, where every step became a revelation, and every revelation a step away from Earth and toward the boundless joy of a life among the stars.

Beyond the opaline vines and light-spun meadows of Elathria, the sky arched lower, tinged now with the cool silver of twilight. The landscape shifted from crystal gardens to smooth, dark stone veined with luminous threads that pulsed softly beneath Lily’s feet.

Ahead, nestled in the crook of a mountain shaped like the crescent of a sleeping moon, stood a structure carved from starlight itself.

“The Library of Aetherion,” Orion said, his voice almost a whisper. “Few are granted passage.”

The Library of Aetherion

Lily stared, her breath caught in her throat.

The library seemed less like a building and more like a living memory: soaring spires glistened in the waning light and its vast double doors bore carvings that shifted and moved—stories unfolding in ever-changing relief. She saw constellations form and break apart, stars being born, collapsing into themselves, spinning into spirals that echoed the infinite.

When they stepped inside, the air changed. It was not air, not truly—but the sensation of presence. Of knowledge held in stillness.

The library’s interior opened into a vast dome where no walls stood. Instead, the universe itself surrounded her. The floor was a mirrored reflection of the stars above. Beneath her boots, galaxies turned like clockwork gears. Overhead, constellations hung in radiant threads, connected by lines of glowing script in a language she could not read but understood. Somehow.

“It knows you're here,” Orion said softly. “It is awake now.”

“What is this place?” she breathed, turning slowly, arms wrapped around herself as if to contain the enormity of it.

“A repository of star-maps. Of stories born before language. Each constellation carries a tale—not just of how it was named by your world, but what it truly is. Who it once was. What it still feels.”

He led her toward a floating platform—a slender disc of light—and together they rose, suspended in silence. All around them, constellations shimmered to life.

“Here,” he said, gesturing gently. “Cygnus. The swan who carries the sorrows of lost lovers across the river of stars.”

The swan appeared—wings vast, stars glittering in its feathers. Lily gasped as it passed overhead, trailing ribbons of memory behind it—scenes of whispered goodbyes, tearful reunions, souls holding hands across lifetimes.

“And this—Cassiopeia,” Orion continued. “A queen, yes, but also a mother, arrogant and aching, punished for her pride but remembered for her grief.”

The constellation flared. Within it, a woman’s figure emerged, regal yet haunted, her crown askew, her eyes searching the heavens for a daughter torn from her.

Every constellation, Lily realized, was a being—not merely a shape drawn by men, but a living echo, a soul given to the sky. The myths she had known were only shadows of the truth. These were not stories. They were histories written in the stars.

“And yours?” she asked softly, eyes shining. “What of Orion?”

He turned to her, and his starlight eyes dimmed slightly, as if remembering hurt.

*I was once a hunter. Then a wanderer. Now I am a guide. My stars were scattered when I lost my way. But there is always someone looking up, someone dreaming. That is what holds me together.”

She reached out, her fingers brushing his. “You’re not alone anymore.”

In that great dome of memory and myth, Lily felt her soul root itself deeper in the stars—but also, faintly, a tug. A pulse. Like a heartbeat not her own. A whisper of tea steam and cobblestones, of her mother’s hand brushing her hair. Of home.

But for now, she let it rest. She was in a place where stars breathed, where stories shimmered—and she had only just begun to read.

Teacake Tidbits

1. Astronomy Was a Popular Pastime—Even for Women

In the Victorian era, astronomy became a fashionable and intellectual hobby for the middle and upper classes. Telescopes were increasingly available for domestic use, and stargazing was considered both morally uplifting and scientifically noble. Women like Agnes Mary Clerke and Anne Jump Cannon (though the latter came slightly later) made early strides in astronomical writing and cataloguing, often from the “sidelines” of academic circles.

2. The Royal Greenwich Observatory Led the Charge

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich was one of the most significant centers for astronomy in the 19th century. It was here that standardized timekeeping (Greenwich Mean Time) was developed, and astronomers meticulously mapped the stars for use in navigation, empire-building, and scientific progress. Astronomers Royal such as Sir George Airy were active during this time, embodying the era’s reverence for science and order.

3. The Victorian Sky Was Much Darker Than Today

Before the advent of widespread electric lighting, London skies—even with fog and coal smoke—offered clearer views of the stars than we experience now. The Milky Way and major constellations were commonly visible from urban rooftops, especially on still, cold nights.

Will Lily decide to stay in the heavens with Orion or return home? Come back next Thursday for the conclusion of Lily's journey to the stars.