"I always awaited with dear passion for the day of the festival. The joy of people who could find themselves wrapped in laughter and... Food of good quality for the first time. As a kid it never mattered to me, I was there for the lights and the shows. The food was good, I never knew the vegetables we so often ate covered in dirt could taste so good accompanied by a boiled piece of meat. I always... Waited for the festival."

A sweet silence masked the sadness behind a smile he could not hold back. It was a gesture only to himself and the cloudy sky that looked at him from above. The girl resting on his back could not see him, the only thing he could feel was a giggle that escaped her small mouth, as if she had misinterpreted the meaning of his words. Of course, he thought, she couldn't have understood that feeling he so passionately wished to transmit.

He choked back that feeling of loneliness growing in his chest, and sighed with a ragged breath. He parted his lips and started again.

"It was a good day, one time a year. But then, the sorrow of daily life would come again. The uncertainty of whether you'd be alive or not the next week- or even, if you had already stopped caring about life, if your death would amount to anything. Yes... I remember I once thought I'd like to die serving a powerful lord. A honorable warrior, with a sword at my waist and a bow at my back. What... A miserable dream that was."

His intentions carried over to her this time. It was clear by the way she tightened her arms around his abdomen.

"I was foolish enough to think the lord of land could only enjoy such a thing once a year, too! Maybe that's why he looked so happy, I thought. But literacy came with a lot more things than just the ability to read and write. After mother taught me... I tended to go to town and borrow some books. The scribes at the town were merciful enough to lend them to me."

"Was it then when you learned, then, how to talk as one of them and act so noble regardless of your appearance? I had begun to think your mother might have had an encounter with a royal before your birth."

She whispered with a content smile. Her mockery was sweet enough that it couldn't bother him the slightest, he coveted those words more than anything below that sky.

"I soon noticed what I felt for them was envy. And it became anger even sooner. When my father was employed under the lord, and he arrogantly started to sing that his tales of grandeur had begun, I even wished he could behead the noble and attain the title. Well, I didn't know how things worked back then."

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The girl touched her nape in a reaction. There was nothing but a pendant clinging from a chain, wrapped around her neck.

"But when he attempted it, as if the gods had all heard my voice and told him to act, all of my fantasies plummeted. A farmer kid pretending he could be a noble- my father died sooner than I had discovered what a noble truly was. I gave up the dream... I don't want that any more."

"What is that you desire then...?"

He turned around to face her, and the girl opened her eyes at last. Inside of her pupils, a star-struck night was painted in an endless sea of black, glimmering like beacons to their only viewer. In a place where stars where dwindled by the light of farmhouses and a hundred fireplaces, the ones he sought were in those eyes.

"I don't have a dream anymore. I figured those things are for heroes and people who's life has been already laid out in front of them. For me, who has to fight, the only thing I can do is wish for a meaningful death."

She looked away shortly after hearing his words, still holding onto his arms. When she looked back up, there was a strange resolve expressed on her face that told him he was about to be nagged at yet again.

"Then-"

She raised her body upwards without a trace of an effort, and her feet danced in the air before she floated away from the roof. He followed her till the edge, and she grabbed his hand, and his legs soon started to feel light, like feathers. She carried him up into the sky, until their breaths graced the clouds at the top.

He saw from above how the roads ended short. He could see the lights at the windows on the noble's manor, and the cattle that laid down on grass to let their bodies finally rest. The village closing down, and then, a vast forest that extended until the edge of the mountain.

"Being a noble does not seem like a goal big enough. I commend to you a new one."

She extended out her hand, covered by a silky white glove, and an endearing smile appeared on the corner of her lips.

"Everything your eyes can see, take it for yourself. And if everything is already yours, climb higher, and then take what you see. If you don't think you can do it-"

She lifted him higher, and they pierced past the clouds like an arrow. The mist that surrounded them was gone after not too long and, now, the stars that melted away the night were all visible to him. And in the center of them all, a giant half-moon that gathered all the light, and seemed to smile at him with grace.

"If you don't think you can do it... I'll be here to help you get the world, and the moon, and the stars behind the moon."

He was silent for a minute, as he admired the beauty in front of his eyes. One that for the first time in his life, he was able to thoroughly enjoy. His eyes locked with hers, and an equally brilliant smile was returned. This time, without sadness, and a stranger to loneliness and loss.

"Yeah." He whispered. "That would be great."