NIGHT WATCH LOG — Hota

20:00. Nothing to report. The sky is quiet. Out there, the Blinking Star turns the same slow way it always does. Honestly, it’s boring. I’ve kept the night watch in this village for three years. My job is to be the first to spot a traveller sailing in from another star. Whichever village spots one puts them up for the night. The boats carry no light. For one instant they cross in front of the Blinking Star, and the star dims. That is the only sign you ever get. And I have never once spotted one. Behind my back, people call me “the watchman who sees nothing.” Tonight, I tell myself. Tonight’s the night.

22:14. The Blinking Star’s light dims, just for a moment. Am I imagining it?

22:24. It dims again. Ten minutes, exactly. Something is crossing in front of that star. A traveller, coming this way out of the sky. Finally — finally, my night has come.

22:25. Urgent. Traveller sighted. I light the signal lamp three times and send word to the next village. Then I run to wake old Granny Zara.

23:00. The whole village is up. Granny puts a pot on to boil, and everyone sweeps the dust off the gate. I even leave a line in the log for the traveller’s name. My hand is shaking.

23:40. Granny Zara drains her bowl of soup in one gulp, stares out the window for a while, and says:

“Hota. A traveller would pass on by.”

”…What?”

“That thing’s been coming back to the same spot on that star’s cheek this whole time. Same place, every ten minutes. That’s no traveller. That’s a birthmark. The star spins around, and every time that side turns to face us, it dims. That’s all it is.”

A blemish on a star. Three years of waiting, and my traveller turns out to be a permanent mark on somebody else’s cheek.

23:45. I write the correction: No traveller. Star has a birthmark. This time I light the signal lamp twice.

— But then.

The next village’s watch-window is already lit. And the one past that. Traveller sighted keeps rolling outward, lighting one window after another, deep into the sky.

My correction hasn’t even reached the next star yet. The message and the correction travel the same road, at the same speed. It will never catch up.

24:00. Notes.

Tonight, I got the whole village to find a traveller. A traveller that was never there.

Out in the sky, villages I’ve never seen are only just beginning to put the water on to boil.