Fortune
His father imparted the old way of reading the stars; the configurations that bespoke victory. He learned with will, but too often the smoke went up, and the sky was hidden.
And as he grew, he put aside omens for a sharp edge, and thought only that a starless night was the better to prepare an ambush.
This night, war is done; the sky is dark with ordinary rain; the room familiar with the lamps unlit. And he knows her, still not fully seen, full and bright and high and wanted: the sign that had always blazed within that cloud.