Archive of Our Own

The Dog Star, Sirius, was a luminary of the highest effluence; his radiance shone throughout his spheres and dignities, he sat as judge over the stars in all the Empyrean and half the Galaxy came under his sphere of influence. And on this morning in 1983 he was balanced precariously on a pile of packing crates, watching a brown haired young woman move into her first adult flat.

He had watched Kathleen O'Brien for more than a decade, seen her grow into her own confidence, blossom once removed from her abusive relatives, work her way into university and choose her own career. For all that time Sirius had been refining his own focus and now, at last he thought he would be able to speak to her again.

"There!" declared Kathleen's cousin, Basil. "One bed, two sofas and more books than the local library. Everything a newly qualified veterinarian could possibly ask for in a cosy bachelorette pad." He put down the last box of books and wiped his hair out of his eyes.

"Are you sure you don't mind unpacking the boxes yourself?" asked Nicola who had been Kathleen's roommate at university and who had brought her muscular new boyfriend to help the moving party. "And you do know, don't you, that you have to come out to celebrate tonight?"

"Yes, yes," said Kathleen. "I promise that I'll be down at the Duke's Feathers by seven o'clock. I just need to shower first." Her voice was husky and musical. It had lost a lot of the lilting accent it had had when Sirius first knew her, but it was still the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

She hustled her cheerful friends out of the door and then turned back to her own new living room. Now was Sirius' chance. He mustered every ounce of control and slowly drew his physical body into being. Not too strong, not too weak; enough that Kathleen would be able to see him, not enough that the power of his green fire would burn through the fabric of her home. It should not be possible for a luminary to show himself to a creature at will, but Sirius had never cared to be told that he couldn't do whatever he liked and this was something for which he had huge motivation.

His wings flickered vividly behind him, silver and green against the flat's neutral decor, the mane of his hair flaming past them and Kathleen turned in startlement and alarm. If he had breath, Sirius would have held it, but her alarm only lasted a moment fading into recognition and delight.

"Leo!" she cried. "Leo, I thought I was never going to see you again."

"It's difficult for a human to see a luminary," he explained, diffidently. "Your boon from the Master was a one-time only ability, but I've been practising being visible ever since."

He was really with her, really talking to Kathleen and he barely knew what to say.

"I'm so glad you managed it," she said. "I always wanted to let you know how sorry I was about the last time I saw you. I wasn't functioning properly with grief -- I'd just lost my father and then I lost you; you were my dog and I loved you and then you weren't any more. It was only afterwards that I realised you'd been trying desperately to reach out for me and I just treated you like a stranger and walked away. But whatever else you were, you were still Leo, weren't you?"

He had forgotten how smart she was. "Oh, Kathleen!" he said in delight. "Even when you were a 10-year-old girl, you were the wisest person I'd ever met. Yes, I'm still Leo, even though I'm also Sirius. And I always was -- the stars in the Judgement Seats sent me to Earth as a punishment and to find the Zoi, but as soon as my dog's mind and body was old enough to think clearly I knew who I was. The one thing I could never do was make you understand me, but when I played with you and listened to you and hated your horrible relatives, that was always me." He hesitated. "And when I loved you, that was me too."

"Tell me about it," she said. "I mean, really tell me about it. It was horribly confusing when I was a child. We ran with the Master's hounds, then he was there himself and creatures from a dream or a nightmare, and you were changed out of all recognition and then you were gone. It was obviously something very important, but I never really knew what had happened. Tell me now."

So Kathleen curled up on one of her two new sofas and Sirius told her about his wrongful conviction and the hunt for the Zoi. And if he glossed over his betrayal by his Companion, well, that could surely be excused. Kathleen was leaning back against the sofa arm, laughing at the memory of the destruction of Duffie's ugly pots, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to reach out to her. Sirius stopped himself just in time, his hand grazing the air between them. If he had still been a dog, he could've curled up in Kathleen's arms; now he dared not touch her.

"Sorry," he said as his hand fell again, "I want to touch you again. I can't be sure enough that I wouldn't burn you, but I want to. I want to very much."

"Oh yes," she said dreamily. "Do you remember our games with Robin and the cats? We pushed and tumbled against each other until we all collapsed together on the carpet in a heap. But being able to talk to you is good too."

"It means I can tell you how proud I am of you," he said. "You picked your life up and managed to stay friends with your cousins even when their mother was arrested for child neglect and you built a new home with Miss Smith and worked your way through college."

"Yes," she said. "At first I was really worried about studying sciences. I mean what was I going to say? `I don't know what you think stars are made of, but I've met one and he was made of green fire and stood tall like an angel with a voice that could shake the earth'? I don't think any of my lecturers would have been very impressed. But it turned out okay in the end; there's not a huge amount of astronomy needed for veterinary medicine. Oh crumbs, I need to go -- I'll be late to the pub."

Sirius frowned a little -- he had hoped to have Kathleen to himself and he still had the most important thing left to ask her, but Kathleen being Kathleen would never abandon her friends. " Wait just a minute," he said. "I wanted to bring you to see my home in the Empyrean. It's glorious there -- I think you'll like it. I can come back to collect you tomorrow. Please come?"

Kathleen looked at him and smiled. "All right," she said. "I've never seen luminaries at home before."

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Sirius stood with Kathleen in the Hall of Blue Trees. The tip of one wing pointed out Polaris and Antares in the Judgement Seats, with Sirius' own throne of judgement temporarily empty beside them, the other curved protectively around her, shielding her from the view of three minor Castor luminaries and a junior star cluster. He had stopped introducing her proudly to his peers after Arcturus had looked down his snooty orange nose and said, "A creature, Sirius? How delightfully quaint. Really, quite last millennium. Although it's nice to see you following in my footsteps."

Sirius urged Kathleen away from him, disregarding her questions about what the other luminary meant. This was his home, he loved it and was proud of it, but some loyalties were higher than others and no one had the right to trivialise Kathleen or besmirch her with gossip.

Instead, he drew her to stand on the hall balcony of golden fire, looking out across the Milky Way, watching comets and meteorites dancing down the astral paths that led to the palaces of the great Effulgencies.

" That's Pegasus," he said, pointing out great sparkling shapes overhead, "although the system's not at its best right now. The denizens of Algenib and Markab are suing each other over the rights to gather the stardust from the surrounding area and they've left their spheres unattended while they cloister themselves with lawyers. Luminaries are always fighting for greater effluence, but it does no one any favours to have a consolation at war with itself. They come within Altair's sphere of influence and I don't envy her at all. The worst problems in my own sphere of influence tend to be Betelgeuse and Rigel and that's more like friendly rivalry. But if Algenib and Markab don't come to terms soon, they stand to lose all their dignities. We can't have systems untended and there are always up and coming young stars looking for extra power."

"Like the one who cast you out of your sphere?" asked Kathleen.

"Sometimes." said Sirius.

"Your friends do seem rather over-keen on their own importance," she observed.

Thankfully, the procession of the changing equinox started then and he was able to distract her with the colours and ferocity of the participating stars. It was no part of his plan for Kathleen to see too many things she might disapprove of.

Once the procession was over and she was starry eyed and giddy on its beauty, he gathered his power around her and let the most important part of the trip begin. The palaces of the Empyrean had been glorious to show off, but it was his own green sphere and its empty white companion that he really needed her to love.

He watched anxiously as she climbed into the most intimate parts of his own sphere and hung suspended over the Sirius system, her face lit with glee like a child on a trapeze. She laughed up into his face as he pointed out 12 different planets, with 37 moons, two great asteroid belts slung asymmetrically around the system and a couple of young comets tumbling in the distance.

"And what is that?" asked Kathleen, pointing at the smaller white sphere hanging on the horizon. Her face changed, closed down slightly and Sirius watched her carefully, trying to gauge her reactions. "Is there another luminary in your system?"

It was a reasonable question; Sirius had talked a little about the Castor cluster after all, but he was still unsure how to answer it. This was it, the most important question of his life, and he had no idea how to ask it.

"Not exactly," he began. "The luminaries of greatest effluence often have a Companion, someone who will assist in the affairs of their spheres, but my last Companion was the one who framed me for murder and had me sent to Earth."

"Oh, Sirius! I'm so sorry." Kathleen reached out to him and then stopped, her hand hovering midair between them, unable to touch his fire.

"It wasn't all bad," he said. "It brought me to you after all. And in the end she and her accomplice were both destroyed by the Zoi they tried to steal."

"Good!" said Kathleen firmly, then thought for a minute. "I did that, didn't I? They were trying to kill me -- and Brian and Robin and all the dogs, just to get to you?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," said Sirius. "You had no understanding of the Zoi or what it could do and as you said, they were trying to kill you."

"I'm not sorry," said Kathleen fiercely, "and I'm doubly not sorry now I know what they were really doing. They should have stayed well away from you."

Things, Sirius felt, were going remarkably well. " I've just one more thing to show you," he said and they moved through the firmament towards one of the planets. It was neither the largest nor the brightest, but its orbit kept it always between Sirius' main sphere and his companion and he had devoted a great deal of time and attention to it before returning to Earth.

"This is Flaxnor," he said nervously as they hung suspended in its swirling clouds of gas. "I've been working on it a lot lately and... well, you'll see."

They stepped through a gap in the clouds and through a containment field that glittered briefly as they entered, then they were standing in a grassy green meadow. To one side, there was an orchard of apple trees, fruit ripe on their branches; to the left the meadow sloped gently downhill to a tinkling stream. The containment field above them filtered Sirius' naturally green light so the sky was a pale clear blue.

Kathleen looked round in pleasure. "It's like a slice of Earth," she said, " like the meadows on the river back home, combined with Mrs Plummer's orchards. We played somewhere very like this when I was a child." Sirius pounced towards her and she laughed. Then suddenly they were chasing each other around the meadow, the years rolling back and the differences between 10 years old and 23 disappearing, although Sirius was very careful of Kathleen's fragile human skin, making sure never to quite catch her with his full radiance.

At last they slowed and Kathleen walked from the orchard to the stream, examining Sirius' created world as she went, growing more thoughtful as she did so.

"It's all very beautiful," she said, returning to Sirius.

He screwed up his courage. "Thank you," he said. "I did it for you. Kathleen, I want you to stay with me. I want you to be my new Companion."

She drew in a deep breath. "Your Companion? Is that even possible?"

"Not normally," he said," but the Zoi can change you. You'd still be you, you'd just be a luminary too. It's quite safe -- it's not done often but creatures have become luminaries before. That's what Arcturus meant -- he changed Merope and her sisters millennia ago --"

"Merope?" she broke in. "Oh, of course, the Pleiades."

Sirius was surprised into a laugh. "I always forget how much surprising knowledge your people have," he said. "I suspect Sol of passing all sorts of Empyrean secrets into your folklore. But the seven sisters have a cluster of their own spheres and are model heavenly citizens. They show that it can really work. So Kathleen, will you do it? Will you become my Companion?"

"I'm human," she said, "a creature. I'm not your equal."

"The wisest person I've ever met, remember? You were my equal then. You're still my equal now."

Her head was turned away from him; he wished he could see her face. "You've been planning this," she said slowly.

"Yes," he admitted. "I've wanted you as my Companion ever since I had to leave Earth. I was your dog and you protected me and I protected you. I want that back. At first, I didn't think I could do it, but since you became an adult, I've been thinking of ways to make it work."

"And you created this environment here to give me a place that looks like Earth?"

"I want you to feel at home," he said.

"Oh Sirius," she said. "No."

"No?" He asked, stupidly.

"No." She looked at him then. "This isn't really Earth, or anything like it. The orchard is perfect, every apple is ripe, there's not a single windfall on the ground. Your meadow has flowers, but no insects; none of the apples are half eaten and does pollen even exist? The stream is clean and fresh, but where are the fish, the bugs, the algae?"

She was turning him down because his creation of Flaxnor wasn't good enough? "I can change things," he said desperately. "I can add insects, fish, any kind of creature you want. Please don't say no because of that."

"Sirius," she said, "you just don't get it. The problem isn't the insects. The problem is that none of this is real. You are and I am, but this place isn't. Its plants don't really grow, they don't need pollination. Do they even change when you're not here?" She must have read the answer in his face. "If you did make animals, they wouldn't be real either. Sirius, I'm a person. I think, I live my life, I make my own choices. You were a creature, my dog and you did that too. Even the other animals you knew then, the cats and the other dogs, they might not have thought as deeply or clearly as you did, but they were their own creatures too. Anything you make here has no depth, no autonomy, it would exist only as a backdrop for me and I'd lose all the things I could become on Earth. That's why it isn't good enough and that's why I'm saying no."

A hollow shape was opening up inside Sirius. So this was what devastation felt like.

"Listen," said Kathleen. "My own world is real. There are people and animals and what I do matters. I've just spent the last five years slaving to become a vet. I have real skills, important ones that I can use to do good things. You want me to abandon that just when I can start to put it into practice? And for what? I can be your Companion, have my own celestial sphere? Don't think I'm not tempted, it's all very beautiful and you would be there, but what would I do all day? Sit and enjoy my own effluence, let lesser luminaries admire me for being your Companion, think how beautiful my own adornments are and walk in this small virtual meadow to remind me of the real Earth?"

With the exception of Flaxnor, this was pretty much how Sirius' first Companion had spent her time. Some part of his mind recognized how ridiculous it had been to think that Kathleen might be willing to live like that, but it was drowned out by a deep, green well of misery. If he had still been a dog, he would have laid his ears flat against his head and howled his anguish to the galaxy. But as a luminary he must still exercise greater control than he had ever done in his life, ensure that he did not burn Kathleen up and return her to her own life, the life she was choosing over him. Then he could abandon himself to his misery.

"I'm sorry," he said in a small voice. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to be selfish. I'll take you home now. You won't have to worry about me again."

"No!" cried Kathleen. "No! That's not what I want either. I don't want to lose you. I just don't want to abandon my entire life either. You're the best friend I ever had. You can't make it all or nothing like that. Yes, I want to go home. But I want to see you again too. Promise me you will come back to visit. Promise me."

"I promise." he said.

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Sirius had promised he would come back, so he did.

At first he felt a little awkward coming into the life that was so important to Kathleen, but found he grew more comfortable with time. He could not be seen by anyone but Kathleen -- to be honest he still wasn't sure whether that was through his own choice or whether the careful control he had practised so laboriously applied only to her -- so he avoided nights out with her friends, but he did spend occasional evenings simply enjoying being present while she held small dinner parties in her flat.

More often he would arrive on a Saturday morning and they would spend the day doing something together. They hiked on the nearby moors, played Monopoly on a rainy afternoon or groomed the dogs and cats at the animal rescue shelter where Kathleen volunteered. The animals could see Sirius in a way that humans could not and although he tended to startle them at first, they would eventually bask in his radiance.

Sirius was there to share Kathleen's anger when a litter of seven abused, wet and half dead puppies were brought into the shelter. His anger might even have been greater than hers -- he felt he had a personal interest in puppies being drowned. He stood by her as she treated them and shared her joy when they healed and grew strong and went to good homes. He shared her tears over a once proud Great Dane who arrived whipped and beaten with 18 broken bones.

"It hurts... hurts so bad..." whimpered the Great Dane in words a luminary could understand, though Kathleen's human ears could not. "Please... just make the pain stop." Sirius felt a small part of his heart break and he heard matching heartbreak in Kathleen's voice as she admitted there was nothing more she could do beyond putting the dog down quickly and in peace. Sirius regretted more than ever that he could not hold Kathleen afterwards, but he hoped his mere presence was a comfort.

Of course Sirius couldn't always be on Earth; he had responsibilities to his whole sphere of influence and obligations to maintain order in the Empyrean and sit in the Judgement Seats. Running his home system had also taken more attention since he determined that it should have one luminary, not two, and that the white radiance of the small empty sphere would not be augmented by any luminary but him. He didn't neglect his work and suspected that he was even willing to give more attention to petty arguments among luminaries knowing that he would be able to see Kathleen at the weekend. But he was also now seeing something of Kathleen's work, sometimes at the shelter and sometimes at the shiny veterinary practice across town, some of it sad but most of it involving healing and even joy. Her work was smaller in scale than his, but equally vital and he started to understand why she had been so reluctant to let it go. In fact there were times when he even believed that straightening out fights between squabbling luminaries, nearly omnipotent beings, who really should have known better, was far less important than soothing the hurts of Kathleen's small creatures, creatures that the luminaries would barely condescend to notice at all.

So he spent his spare time on Earth, walking in real meadows by the river, or snatching Kathleen away during a British evening to watch the sunrise over the mountains in Japan. He thought Kathleen had told her foster mother, Mrs Smith, about him and when the old lady came to dinner, she smiled across the room at the corner where she could surely not see him.

And in late 1985, he took Kathleen away for a fortnight's holiday in the Empyrean. He was careful not to take her past the empty Companion sphere again; manipulating her was no part of his plans. They watched the birth of a star in the Omega Centauri cluster and Kathleen met Altair, who had finally forced the fractious stars in her spheres into reluctant harmony and created a minor scandal by awarding the disputed stardust rights outsystem to a red dwarf from the Andromeda galaxy.

Then, as a grand finale he returned her to her own system and they hovered in the asteroid belt, to see the great blaze of Halley's Comet as it swung around Sol's sphere. A comet as seen from the Empyrean was glorious, all piercing eyes and trails of fire and a song that made the entire system respond with sympathetic vibrations. Kathleen was starry eyed and half drunk on beauty when Sirius returned her home and he thought that if she would not be his Companion, then the life they were making for themselves would suit him well.

None of this stopped him accosting Sol shortly after his failed proposal and before he would consider bringing Kathleen back to the Sirius system. He was truly not trying to change her mind; she had her reasons for wanting her own life on Earth and he was starting to think they were good ones. But it hurt his pride that his created Earth had been so readily distinguished from the real one. There may have been no insects, but he had carefully slaved over each detail of its creation, infusing every rock and tree with his own memories of green earthy spaces and he wanted to know how it could be such a failure.

"You tried to replicate Earth here?" asked Sol, standing on Flaxnor's surface and looking round with a supercilious and disparaging air.

"I don't see why not," said Sirius, sulkily.

"Well I should think that the result would tell you why not," said Sol, gesturing at the meadow.

In truth, Sirius had to admit that Flaxnor had not fared well in the months since he had visited it with Kathleen. Despite her accusations, it was not quite true to say that the environment would not change in his absence; it had faded without organic decay, the trees were no longer as well defined, their fruit no longer as crisp, the stream was infused with tiny elements of the planet's own storms. The meadow was still beautiful, but it no longer felt like a part of Earth and a nebulous sense of wrongness hung in the air.

"What did you do," Sol continued, "use the Zoi?"

Sirius said nothing. What else was he supposed to have done? Earth was a jewel among planets, that Sol rightly kept a well guarded secret; there were few places that Sirius would have been be able to find enough power to do something similar and the Zoi was native to this system after all.

"That's not the point." said Sol, impatiently when Sirius tried to explain. "You couldn't create the real Earth that way; of course Kathleen was going to notice the difference. And you'd better not get any ideas about taking the real thing either."

"As if I would do that," Sirius responded, his whole body burning brightly. "I wouldn't lower myself to steal your measly planet!"

"But you'd try to copy it to steal one of my creatures? You've been spending enough time lately in my system."

"And what if I have?" asked Sirius. As his anger blazed stronger, the grass they were standing on withered and died. Sparks of green fire flew out from his hair and wings and the closest apple trees caught fire where the sparks landed. "My effluence is greater than yours; your entire sphere and all your dignities come under my authority. I shall walk on any of your planets whenever I choose!" he grew as he spoke until his blazing silhouette dominated the skyline.

Sol's fires did not burn as brightly as Sirius', but his anger was every bit as strong. "Pay attention to me now. Your effluence may be greater than mine, your power is certainly greater. But Earth is mine and Kathleen is one of my creatures and I do not permit anyone, be they a luminary of the highest importance to question them, or harm them, or claim any authority over them. You might remember that from when Kathleen destroyed two luminaries with a stolen Zoi."

Sirius, who had been considering throwing thunderbolts, abruptly deflated. "Well, if you object to my presence around Kathleen you've not been making much attempt to show it," he said, in more of a mumble than a roar. "I've been visiting for years, after all, even before I managed to make myself visible."

"Look Sirius," said Sol. "I don't object to you knowing Kathleen. I don't micromanage my creatures' lives like that. She loved you dearly when she was a child and she still seems to love you now. I wouldn't even object to her becoming your Consort . But you've never been quite sane about her. Yes, I think you might do anything, even down to stealing a planet if you thought it would make her do what you want and I won't have her bullied or manipulated or dazzled by the things that you can do just because you're a luminary and she is not. That's the path to a lifetime of regret and as a luminary her lifetime would be very long. You are my heavenly Liege, but she is mine and I won't let you hurt her."

"I'm not going to hurt her," said Sirius. "I asked her to be my Companion and she said no and I respect that decision. But if she wants me to visit I'm going to do that. I'd rather you were happy about my presence in your sphere, but I don't honestly think you can stop me."

Sol looked at him sternly. "Agreed," he said. "You may visit Kathleen and so long as you do not interfere in any other way, I will welcome you to Earth. But remember; you hurt her and lesser effluence or not, I will hunt you down."

"Agreed," said Sirius. "And now, if you finally believe that I'm not going to steal Earth or tell half the luminaries in the Empyrean about it, will you please tell me what went wrong here?"

"You went about it wrong. You wanted trees, and you knew what they should look like, so you made them. You wanted grass, growing out of soil and water flowing through a stream and you used tremendous power to call them into being. But you've spoken to Earth, seen the depths of its dark places. You know a living planet doesn't work like that. Do you think that I designed Earth? I encouraged its autonomy, gave it a little power and a lot of time and allowed it to grow. Kathleen and all my creatures on the planet are Earth's children, but neither Earth nor I conjured them into existence fully grown. Earth even has its dark children -- you met one. I confine them within rules to restrain their strength, but I neither understand them nor know them and I choose not to intervene to destroy them, because permitting all things that grow out of Earth's nature makes Earth as a whole stronger."

"You mean that the planet shapes itself ? Earth always seemed very wise for a planet."

"Did you never wonder why I have no Companion?" asked Sol. "The light of another luminary in my system would scorch my planets, hold them back from what they could become. I'm most concerned about Earth of course, but Mars and Saturn are very beautiful too. And it's why I have chosen to remain obscure, even for a luminary of my effluence; if my preferences were widely known in the Empyrean, I'd be seen as dangerously eccentric. But I nursed Earth through its first glimmerings of self-awareness and it has grown to be all the Companion to me I could ask. Earth's children, every kind of plant and animal, grew out of that. They grew from joy and sorrow, laughter, pain and delight. Even its moon is given meaning and identity, in its own right and in the minds of Earth's children, far more than your normal chunk of orbital rock." Sol's ageless, golden face blazed with passion and love.

"So," said Sirius, "you're saying that if I want to create a planet like Earth, I have to give up my own dominance, or even influence over it?"

"You can keep some influence," said Sol. "Better yet, give it a lot of love and encouragement to become whatever it could be. But yes, you won't get to choose what that is. And the results are unlikely to be anything that Kathleen could see as resembling Earth. I do wish you well, you know, but remember what I've said about hurting one of my creatures."

Sol was a middling luminary whose peers would think he was entirely insane, a luminary who had abandoned all pretensions to consequence in the Empyrean, and found happiness in the company of planets and creatures, including the most beautiful planet Sirius had ever seen. For a few moments Sirius allowed himself to feel jealous. He still hated being warned away from Kathleen, but he supposed that he could approve of Sol's concern for her best interests. Sol did like him, he knew. Sirius had heard Sol being icily polite to Sirius' last Companion, fulfilling all the Empyrean forms of precedence and being obsequious about her effluence, while working passionately against her with everything he had. Seen like that, Sol shouting at Sirius to defend his own interests was a positive sign.

After Sol left, Sirius turned back to his created meadow on Flaxnor. It was in a sorry state now, even its spatial arrangement had been pulled out of true. Half the orchard had been destroyed altogether and most of the grass was burned away, but the stream now tinkled uphill at a crazy angle fulfilling the instructions Sirius had given it, in defiance of the laws of gravity or indeed the need for a source for the water.

Sirius sighed and reached mentally for the Zoi. This was the last time he would use it on this planet, he vowed, except in the case of truly dire need. Moments later, the containment field fell and the planet's natural gaseous formations swirled into the void, sweeping most of the trees and rocks away and pulling the stream up into water vapour. Sirius sank up to his great fiery knees into the planet's new, semi-molten crust and bent close to lay his hand upon its surface.

"Hello Flaxnor," he murmured. "I'm Sirius, the denizen of your sphere. You know me already; I'm the one who gives you light and heat, but I'll be spending more time with you now and I hope we can get to know each other better - after all, I can't spend all my time following Kathleen round Earth. I'm also the one who just try to turn you into a copy of something you're not, but I won't be doing that again."

Looking around, the swirling gases were actually quite attractive, though lacking in form or definition. Sirius moved a hand through them, grinning in appreciation of the effect of green sparks on them and he was sure he heard an answering laugh from the planet below.

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Life went on. Kathleen got a promotion at work; Sirius visited her two or three times a month. Basil got married and moved to Wolverhampton. Kathleen acted as an usher at the wedding and Sirius stood unseen at the back, showering the happy couple with green sparks that only Kathleen could see.

Kathleen had carefully chosen a ground floor flat with a tiny strip of garden and no anti-pet terms in the lease. When she was 26, Sirius arrived to find a puppy, one of Patchie's great-grandchildren, making himself at home and Kathleen had a white dog with reddish ears again. Before too long, young Laurie was joined by two tabby cats and Snowflake, a nervous Westie from the rescue centre, who gradually blossomed under Kathleen's kindness. "She has a very unfortunate name, of course," Kathleen said to him, "but she's had enough unexpected changes in her life; I don't want to change that as well."

The animals could see Sirius of course and at first approached him with a great deal of caution. But his fire was warming on a cold day and he was generally happy to play games of chase around the garden, so they decided in the end that it was fun to have a luminary of their very own.

Kathleen still visited the Empyrean too and Sirius' peers grew used to seeing him with a fragile, living creature in tow. Kathleen had little patience with the excessive ceremony of the firmament, but loved watching the stars dance or seeing the way that Sirius' effluence gave vitality and life to the luminaries and planets in his sphere of influence, even trickling down so far as to reinvigorate her own sun.

She didn't meet Sol -- she must have registered that the Sun was a luminary in his own right, but never asked about him and Sirius felt unaccountably diffident about introducing her in the Empyrean to a luminary who knew her so well while she knew him not at all. But she spent some time with Altair and with Vega and even with some of Merope's sisters. The high luminaries who were most protective of their own dignity and importance disliked her mere presence, but several more junior stars reacted in shocked pleasure when she gave no greater deference to Capella then she did to them, or pointed out how silly Regulus looked when he insisted on trailing long robes of blue stardust into the Hall of Trees which had quite enough dust of its own. And Sirius was always there of course; those luminaries who objected to Kathleen's irreverence soon learned better than to take it up with him.

Back on Earth, the senior trustee of the animal sanctuary retired and Kathleen took over responsibility for it, although there were still three full-time workers and a team of volunteers. When a local farmer gave them three fields, she moved the main site there and expanded the normal operations about dogs and cats to include donkeys and even a flock of five llamas that local animal welfare officers rescued from a cramped garden shed.

The llama rescue garnered so much local publicity that local schools asked if they could bring in classes to see the animals and learn about the shelter's work. Of course Kathleen said yes, and she reduced her shifts at the surgery to four days a week so she could give guided tours and teach children how to care responsibly for pets. Most of the children just enjoyed a day out of school, or thought that llamas were really cute, but some became really excited and wanted to volunteer. So, with parental permission, they took dogs for walks, measured animal feed and learned to groom the donkeys.

Just as he had with Snowflake, Sirius found that he would sometimes scare the animals, but that with gentleness and patience they came to appreciate his occasional presence with them and Kathleen's rehabilitation record surprised even some of her fellow trustees and volunteers; she obviously couldn't explain to them that the knack was to bring in an invisible personification of one of the brightest stars in the galaxy.

He still tried to find occasion to show her beautiful places in her own world; they visited the Icelandic lava fields and watched blue whales dive in the southern oceans. But when Sirius was neither occupied with his official duties or visiting, he increasingly returned to Flaxnor.

He hadn't brought Kathleen back since that first disastrous visit; he didn't want to remind her of how foolish he had been. But when his work was done and Kathleen had other commitments, he was starting to find the swirling clouds of gas restful. The planet's mind was simple and unformed and very slow acting, but Sirius thought it had forgiven his rough manipulation of its substance and when he lay back against a great twisting cloud to watch the small unoccupied white star rise over the planet's horizon, he thought it even enjoyed his deep fiery green presence.

Then, just when Sirius had thought that this would be the way life stayed, Kathleen met Ian.

Ian was not her first boyfriend, of course, or even the first since she had met Sirius again. Kathleen had a lot of friends; who wouldn't want to spend time with her? And she would often go out with them, eating dinner in a restaurant or dancing at club. From time to time she would meet a man she liked, but Ian was different.

Ian thought Kathleen was special -- as well he should; he didn't dislike her menagerie of pets and wasn't daunted by her commitment to the rescue centre; he was tall and dark and good-looking in a human way; he made Kathleen laugh and he wanted her to give up her small garden flat and marry him. Sirius hated him.

He bottled his anger and jealousy up inside until it threaten to erupt over half of Lancashire or to send his system nova. Then he tackled Kathleen and begged her to change her mind.

She looked at him in shock. "What do you mean, don't get married?"

"I mean it's not too late to stop this. Please Kathleen, he can't be what you want in life."

Shock was quickly morphing into betrayal, then anger, Kathleen's lovely eyes growing wide and furious. "I don't believe this!" she said. "You said you weren't going to pressure me to live like some kind of trophy in the Empyrean; you said you understood that my life was on Earth. But here you are, and the first time I make any real commitment here, you want to stop me. You're not thinking of me, of what I want, you're just being selfish!"

Sirius was angry now too. "Can you really tell me that this is what you want?"

"Yes!" she shouted. "This is what I want. I love Ian and he loves me. And don't tell me that you don't believe it. I know you, Sirius; I bet you've been sneaking around watching him and watching us. If you could really find any accusations to throw at Ian I'd know it by now; instead all you can do is whine ' don't get married'. Well listen, Mr super-powerful luminary, you can just stop spying on me and the people I love."

Sirius would have denied her accusations, except that they were mainly true. He had been watching Ian when Kathleen wasn't around and he hadn't found anything wrong with him, besides feeling that the man was taking Kathleen away. He couldn't defend himself, so he took refuge in his anger.

"Fine!" he declared. "I wouldn't want to intrude and I wouldn't want to stay where I wasn't welcome. Enjoy your perfect human life!" And he took himself away, back to his lonely green sphere where he could sulk without interruption and pretend that his heart wasn't broken.

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Kathleen chose her bridesmaids and took another promotion at work. She married the man of her dreams and they hiked to Machu Picchu together. Two years passed and she didn't see Sirius at all.

It wasn't that she was counting the days, or even the months. Sure she'd been angry when they fought, and then her best friend walked out and made no contact at all; sure she'd been hurt. Then, as time passed she started getting angry again.

Sirius knew that she couldn't contact him in the Empyrean, that she had no way to go after him, even if she wanted to. Not, of course, that she would have, except maybe to give him a piece of her mind. How dare he disappear like that, as if years of friendship meant nothing, as if he could dictate her entire life and as if one disagreement made their entire history together meaningless?

She moved on with her life. Blending two people's disparate personalities and interests into a single marriage was hard work at times, but was better than anything she had ever expected of being in love. The rescue centre was winning good practice awards and nine-year-old Johnny Barker, who volunteered under the children's programme was showing a true aptitude for working with broken and damaged creatures. She and Ian saw half the capital cities of Europe on weekend breaks away.

Sirius' absence could not sour these things, but she felt it keenly all the same. He had reappeared in her life and she had had his company for four brief years, but somewhere along the way she had expected him to be there forever. She wanted to see him at least once more, if only to clear the air, to try to work out whether she'd been irretrievably foolish to trust him at all. Truthfully, she wanted him back; Sirius, Leo, her friend and her protector. And really, there had to be a way for her to take the initiative.

Kathleen could not leave Earth without Sirius' help, she could make no contact with the Empyrean, but there was still one luminary to whom she had access, albeit one she had never met. Sirius had mentioned him only in passing, but also only in good ways and although it was certain that he would have better things to do than to talk to every one of his creatures, Kathleen could be very persistent. So one spring morning, two years after her marriage, she cancelled her morning surgery and drove up into the moors.

She was looking for a specific spot, a sunny hollow, hidden from the nearby paths, but basking in the morning sun. She spread out a travel rug and arranged herself on it as comfortably as possible; she was prepared for a long wait. She leaned back on her elbows under close her eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face and marshalling her thoughts.

"Sol," she said. "Sol, I know this is unusual and that you normally don't speak to humans directly, but I really need you to take a message to Sirius."

Silence. Silence and absolutely no response, but it was a listening silence. Kathleen settled herself more comfortably and waited.

"I know you probably don't like being treated as a messenger," she tried after half an hour or so. "But I also know that you could speak to me if you really wanted to; Sirius managed it after all. It really is very important that I speak to him. He's been acting like a spoilt child."

She waited, her eyes closed and the heat of the sun bright against her eyelids. Then a brighter figure stepped out of the glare, moved to one side and Kathleen dared open her eyes again. She had grown used to seeing luminaries, flowing hair and curving wings, that strange knack of seeming simultaneously close enough to touch and infinitely far away, but Sol had a golden glow that spoke of being at home on planet Earth.

"Well that's true enough," he said. "Sirius, I mean, behaving like a child. The question is what you want me to do about it."

"Persuade him to stop, I suppose," said Kathleen. "You must have known that he was skipping in and out of your system over the last several years, so I figured you were happy for him to be spending time with me. I was hoping you could make him see sense."

"Forcing a luminary to see sense is never easy, but I'll admit to being more blunt than some of my peers. The real question is what kind of sense you want him to see. Just what do you want him to do?"

"I want to see him again," she said, "even if it's just to have a proper chance to say goodbye. But I don't really want to say goodbye at all. I miss him. I'd really like him back. But I can't have him thinking that he can break up my marriage or run my life."

"Well, there's the trick, you see," said Sol. "Not just what you want, but what is best for Sirius and what he is prepared to do."

"What do you mean?"

"Mean? I don't mean a lot, except that his thoughts belong to him just as yours are your own."

Kathleen examined Sol carefully, trying to work out what he was choosing not to say, but a dreadful suspicion taking shape in her mind.

"Sol," she began. "Is Sirius in love with me?"

Sol was silent.

"How does that even work?" she asked. "He's a luminary and I am human, a creature."

"You're one of my creatures," said Sol. "Earth's children have always been more than the sum of their parts."

"He wanted me to become his Companion. Is that normally a romantic relationship? It doesn't make any sense -- he's wanted that since he first knew me. I was 10 years old and he was my pet dog!"

"It depends," said Sol, reluctantly. " A star's Companion acts as a consort, a second-in-command if you like. Not every major prime has one and some have three or four. It certainly doesn't have to be a romantic relationship, though often it is. It's one of the ways Sirius' first companion deceived us all; the stars in the Judgement Seats had left her in charge to keep running the Sirius sphere of influence once he was banished to Earth -- the rest of us thought she was trying to train up the new denizen of his sphere, when in fact she was trying murder her first consort to give his dignities to her lover."

Kathleen hated that first Companion a little more than she had before.

"As to whether Sirius loved her," Sol continued, "he definitely did. But she didn't often let him near her. He mainly mooned around at a distance, telling anyone who would listen how pretty she was, how pearly and white and shiny. It was quite sickening to be honest. You could argue that Sirius doesn't know much about real love."

"I love Ian," said Kathleen. "He's my husband, my lover; I'm not going to leave him and I won't betray him. That is not negotiable. But I really want Sirius back in my life too."

"You're one of my creatures," said Sol. I'll do whatever you want in this I can certainly speak to Sirius. But I can't guarantee what he will do. Everything on Earth is mine and I will defend you, but I can't protect you from getting hurt. "

"I want to see him again," said Kathleen. "That's the message. I think he's behaved like a spoilt brat, but I want to talk to him at least once more. After that, we'll have to see."

"Then that's your message," said Sol and he faded away into the glare of the sun.

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

"I'm sorry," said Sirius when he reappeared in Kathleen's lunch hour a few days later.

"So you should be," said Kathleen sternly. "I thought you understood my life was here. Am I supposed to have a life half lived, to never experience real love or passion or commitment to another person, just because I've got you in my life? That's not fair. I want love and passion; I deserve that."

"I know," said Sirius. His wings were drooping and his green radiance was muted almost to a sickly yellow.

"Do you?" asked Kathleen. "Do you really? It didn't look like it before. Or have you been lying to me all this time, did you really hate me marrying because you thought that if I didn't I might change my mind and abandon everything else that matters to me to become your Companion?"

"No," said Sirius softly, shuffling his feet and looking like a sheepish schoolboy. "No, I didn't think that. I know that you wanted your life in this world and I know why you wanted it. It's a great life, and you're doing really good things with it."

"And then you just disappeared! How dare you do that Sirius? How could you just walk out as if I was nothing? I was angry, and I shouted at you too -- although I was totally in the right -- but none of that justifies just abandoning me."

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I was angry. I was in the wrong. But I'd rather have had you shouting at me than not speaking to me; I honestly thought you wouldn't want to see me again."

"Well that's the question isn't it?" she said. "I do want to see you again, but I need to know why you were so jealous. Sol wouldn't give me a straight answer. I'm loyal to Ian, Sirius. If you're in love with me yourself or you really want to take me away from him then we can't keep meeting up."

"What? No -- that's not what it was about. I daren't even touch you for fear of incinerating you. I won't try to break up your marriage, I promise. I did look into a bit of human psychology... or animal psychology really. Did you know dogs will often be antagonistic when their owners get a new partner? Some of them will even try to physically push the new boyfriend out of the house or spread out all over the bed so that the humans can't get into it together. I think I must still have more of Leo in me than I knew."

They were silent together, but it was a silence more approaching comfort again.

"Does he know about me?" asked Sirius. "Would make things easier if you told him?"

Kathleen could see how nervous he was even asking the question, but his willingness to ask reassured her. "No," she said. "I've never told him. It isn't even out of any kind of loyalty to you, although I wouldn't feel quite comfortable telling anyone more about the Empyrean without permission. But Ian's a pure rationalist. I could start babbling about the denizens of celestial spheres, or how I had an invisible friend who looked a bit like an angel, or saying that I'd met a dozen stars who were really people and that human astronomy only bears a tiny resemblance to the reality of the firmament, but he'd think I'd gone insane."

"All right," said Sirius. "But if at any point you think you do need to try to explain, it's okay by me."

It was only after he left that she thought about just what he had said and realised that "I daren't even touch you" was a long way from "No, I'm not in love with you."

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Kathleen was rather nervous the next few times that Sirius came visiting, but she gradually relaxed as she started to realise that he really did want her marriage to be happy. He was almost painfully anxious not to intrude too far, drop by too often or be anything other than a supportive friend.

Long weekends away didn't seem appropriate any more and nor did visits every day or sharing secrets which would have given him as many rights in her life as Ian had. But he would drop by the surgery sometimes when she was catching up on paperwork alone, or the sanctuary when she was walking a handful of dogs and one January evening when Ian was away at a conference they watched the Aurora Borealis from Northern Norway and talked about the difference between light refracting through the atmosphere and Sol's laughter illuminating his entire system, which is what Sirius swore the lights really were.

When Ian fell horseriding and broke his wrist, or kissed her after a few hours separation at work or smiled lazily up at her after a slow morning making love she relished the love she felt and the security she had in her happiness. Sirius and she had built good boundaries, she realised with a sense of wonder, and the life she was living was the life she wanted.

Ian's niece, Helen, visited often and discovered a love for the rescue centre, now expanding with the local mayor sitting on the board of trustees. Johnny Barker still volunteered most weekends and started bringing his little sister Sophie. Sophie and Helen quickly became best friends for life, united in their love for fluffy llamas and their conviction that Johnny gave them the dirtiest jobs on purpose. Kathleen started to spend more weekends than ever at the centre, supervising the children and telling them wildly exotic stories about the Master of the Hunt, or the stars in their spheres, or the adventures of the great star Sirius who came to live as a dog on Earth.

Ian would perch on the paddock's fence and smile at the stories and tell Kathleen what a wonderful imagination she had, really she should write a book. Kathleen smiled back and asked him when he thought she would have time to write between her job and the centre and children who wanted to play with the animals and a great lump of a husband who was the most demanding one of all. That of course made Ian bend down from the fence to kiss her and tickle her and between her squirming to get away from him and Laurie and Snowflake barking around them chances are that they would both fall over and go home caked in mud.

But sometimes when Ian couldn't be there, Sirius would come with her and smile at the stories she wove about him and act out her stories with elaborate green gestures that only Kathleen could see. Then the children would run round the field, pretending to be luminaries or the Master's hounds (but being very careful not to frighten the llamas or the donkeys). And once, Helen made her promise to keep a secret, then swore that she had seen a ghostly green figure playing with them.

While Ian was away at a conference in London, Sirius came to her and tentatively asked her to visit Flaxnor with him again.

He must have seen doubt on her face, because he stumbled over himself to reassure her. "No, it won't be like that. I've not been trying to make ready-made plants again. I promise."

So she stepped close to him and he transported her back to his own system, holding her body in a fragile bubble of air, but careful to never quite touch her. They hovered in the planet's outer atmosphere and Kathleen gasped in delight. "It's developing colours," she said, then kicked herself for mentioning the obvious. But the sight in front of her was truly beautiful. The planet's gas clouds were no longer a nebulous mass of cream and beige; instead a golden cap covered one pole, with a luminous blue storm raging to the south and vivid swirls of green and pink chasing each other in spirals around half a hemisphere.

"Sol said that he let Earth determine what it would become itself," said Sirius self-consciously. "I don't mean to compare Flaxnor to Earth, but I've been trying to do the same thing, just spending time talking to it and giving it energy and attention. And right now what it seems to want to become is brightly coloured, with intricate patterns among its gases. Come down here and look closer."

They tumbled through cloud formations and gassy banks until Kathleen stood at the planet's surface, where thick, viscous vapour became fluid crust. She looked up and the bright green light of Sirius' star was reflected and refracted through infinite layers and colours to form a shiny and sparkling net. Sirius' own presence next to her glowed wild and green, making the reflected light on the planet surface glisten more brightly.

"Flaxnor," he said, "I want you to meet Kathleen."

"Kaah-leeen," rumbled the planet, its voice echoing softly from all sides and Kathleen smiled joyously.

"It doesn't speak much yet," said Sirius, "but I think it registers that you are important to me."

"I think it can say the things most important to it," said Kathleen. "After all, Earth manages to speak in many ways even without needing words." She thought of the rich smell of freshly dug earth, the wind in a meadow on a blustery day and the glories of the Himalayas where she'd been taken by Sirius. A purple clump of vapour, shaped like nothing more than a miniature cumulonimbus rose out of a gaseous spring and nudged her hand, for all the world like Laurie telling her he loved her or wanting to be fed. She patted it and smiled.

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Her early 30s were excellent years, full of love and laughter at home, work she loved and a dear friend who just happened to be a near-omnipotent star, but 1996 was turning into a disaster for Kathleen.

The spring had begun with Snowflake running a long feverish sickness; in time she recovered, but Kathleen had to face the fact that her four-legged companions were all growing old. Then flash flooding destroyed half the kennels at the rescue centre. They were fully insured and once rebuilding was complete the facilities would be state-of-the-art, but in the meantime the dogs and cats had to be housed somewhere. Kathleen spent many hours working late into the night, trying to work out just which local farmers' sheds were really adequate emergency accommodation, how to manage rotas of volunteers once not everything was on the same site and then pasting on a brave and smiling face to talk to the local media at much-needed fundraising events.

Somewhere in among it all, she and Ian celebrated a lacklustre wedding anniversary, a weekend break in Paris where he seemed distant and she was ready to collapse through exhaustion, before returning to the grind of daily life. Perhaps that weekend should have been a warning flag, but she thought her marriage was rock solid, the knowledge of Ian's support sustaining her through the ghastly summer. Until the point where she returned home to a dark and empty house and a message saying he was in love with his younger secretary and Kathleen fell apart.

The pain was heart-numbing; she wanted it to go away, for her life just not to be happening. She wanted Sirius -- who was currently visiting every three or four weeks -- to be there in her house right now, to take her away from Earth and drown her pain in the glamour of a different world where she could pretend that Ian just didn't exist.

But of course luminaries, even -- or especially -- stubborn, fiery ones like the Dog Star couldn't be conjured up by an act of mere will. Instead Robin and his girlfriend came round, and her friends Toni and Charlotte, and they fed her donuts and melted cheese sandwiches and jasmine tea. For the first fortnight they took leave in shifts and surrounded her with comfort food and hugs and never let her be alone until she felt strong enough to return to work. Johnny and Sophie came round too, now in their teens, bringing her flowers and a hurt inability to understand that kind of betrayal by an adult they had loved. Even Helen sent her a tearstained card, saying she hoped she didn't have to lose Kathleen just because her uncle was a toe-rag.

So when Sirius did arrive, he found her unhappy but grounded again, able to say bluntly, "Ian left me and I didn't even know there was anything wrong."

His entire body blazed brighter with his anger, then he visibly reined himself in. For the first time since he lost his dog's body, Sirius reached out carefully and touched just two burning green fingers to the back of her hand. The control behind the touch, his fires constrained by his care for her, warmed her in a way that the heat never could.

"I'm sorry," he said, "so sorry."

"What?" She asked, bitterly. "No comment about how you knew it all along? You told me it was a mistake to marry him, remember? You never liked him at all. I feel so stupid. Run away with his secretary? Even his adultery is a cliché. How could I have married a man like that?"

She thought that Sirius would stay silent, or possibly join in with her accusations. He was vindicated, after all. And he did pause for a moment as if unsure what to say or gathering his words. "But you didn't marry a man like that," he said at last. "He's betrayed you now and I would tear him to pieces if Sol would let me and I wish you hadn't been in the position to be hurt like this. But I was wrong when you got married. I was jealous and possessive but the Ian you knew then loved you and wouldn't betray you."

She looked at him suspiciously.

"It's true," he assured her. "He's changed and you can hate him for that, perhaps you should hate him for that, but your entire marriage wasn't a lie. Look, I was in no frame of mind to give him the benefit of the doubt when you met him and I did follow him around looking for dirt, but I never found any. And, when I started talking to you again I still found nothing."

"You spied on my husband," she said, bluntly.

"I did," he agreed. "And it was underhand and wrong and not my prerogative and I knew you would soon cut me down to size if you found out, so I stopped doing it. But it does mean I can tell you that five years ago his business trips and conferences were nothing more than that. He changed. And he made his own choices. He was wrong and anyone who knows you would say he was stupid, but you weren't stupid to trust him. You wanted marriage and love and passion. Those are good things and you had every right to them and for several years at least, they were very real."

It was hard comfort, cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless. They sat together for a long time in silence, touching for the first time in quarter of a century.

---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---

Watching Kathleen through her divorce was one of the hardest things that Sirius had ever done. He longed to swoop in and take her away, but he had said that he wanted her to have all the good thing she could in her life and he meant it. Ian was no longer one of those things, but she had friends and pets who loved her, furry patients at work and homeless animals at the sanctuary who needed her. Ten years ago, he would have done anything to persuade her to go away with him; now he wanted to give her a safe place while she rebuilt her life. So he spent all the time he could with her, heartened by the fact that other people were also looking out for her and some of them loved her almost as much as he did.

The next time she could take leave, he took her back to spend several days on Flaxnor. The planet liked her and spoke in slow words and beautiful rainbows of light and haze, with little clusters of clouds crowding around her and vying for her attention. Sirius had never felt more like a proud father and he believed in his own mind that some of the clouds of gas were developing their own sentience -- the Great Western Spiral and the Southern Blue Storm for sure and possibly half a dozen of the smaller formations. Kathleen would return to Earth refreshed at least.

She had a life to rebuild and he watched with amazing pride as she did so. The sanctuary's new buildings were opened with fanfare and local celebrations and the fundraising appeal which had at first been due to the floods put the centre on to a really sound financial footing. (Sirius didn't properly understand the human concept of "sound finances", but Kathleen assured him that it was important.) Kathleen and Ian's house had been sold in the divorce, so she bought a small cottage across the fields from the centre.

Children's Day at the sanctuary became a monthly event and not only Johnny and Sophie, but also Helen became stalwarts in its organisation, displaying their supporters' badges with pride and helping to devise activities for the younger children. Helen started dating Johnny and swore loyalty to Kathleen in preference to her uncle.

The three teenagers were really too old now for fairy tales about celestial beings, but Sirius was often around when they helped Kathleen with the dogs and cats, mucked out the donkey and llama stalls or simply haunted Kathleen's cottage after a hard day's work. Perhaps Sirius was now more used to focusing his physical presence to be seen, or perhaps the teenagers were simply used to him, but Helen started seeing him more often and even Johnny and Sophie occasionally glimpsed him out of the corner of an eye. So Kathleen had to explain him, and after their initial disbelief, Sirius found he enjoyed being known and welcomed on Earth.

If he had thought a little more deeply, he would have realised that, love for animals notwithstanding, Johnny and Sophie escaped to the centre and to Kathleen's house more than was quite normal. It should probably not have surprised him when their warring parents left each other eight months after Kathleen's divorce. It did surprise him -- and most of the community -- when they left not only each other, but their children, the mother moving into her boyfriend's one-bedroom London penthouse and the father running away to Australia to coach women's tennis. Sophie was left to the tender mercies of social services and Johnny, at 16, was deemed old enough to fend for himself.

Kathleen, of course, was not prepared to accept that. She marshalled all the formidable skills she had developed to deal with bureaucracy and disaster, moved the teenagers into her cottage immediately and became Sophie's official foster mother a mere five weeks later.

Sirius remembered Kathleen's own unhappy childhood and the refuge she had found with Mrs Smith and suggested the old woman would have been proud of Kathleen giving another generation what Mrs Smith had given her. Kathleen, however told him that it was more straightforward than that; Mrs Smith's kindness, generosity and common sense had all formed the woman Kathleen became, but she would have expected Kathleen to do the right and loving thing, regardless of whether she had any precedent or not.

So Sirius found himself absorbed into a nearly ready-made family on Earth. Kathleen started dating again; book loving Richard; Michael, a local barrister, and James, who was strange and kept otters. Sirius summoned up his control and didn't say a word against any of them but none of them lasted longer than a few months, none of them tried to move into Kathleen's cottage and none of them shared her confidence the way Sirius did. They spent long evenings in front of the fire when the teenagers were out and they talked about the world and the universe, firmament politics and human science. Sirius could almost imagine himself Leo again, except Kathleen was now grown into all her full potential.

The black velvet skies of the Empyrean were still home, he still relaxed best when surrounded by its brilliant lights, but he increasingly found himself spending only the time required by his judicial duties in the great halls and palaces and retreating otherwise to Kathleen's cottage or the familiarity of his own system.

Flaxnor was a delight, a slowly blossoming planet whose creatures of storm and gas were not quite self-aware. Not quite yet, Sirius corrected himself; he was quite sure that independent thought would come. He resisted the temptation to spur matters on, but not the temptation to fly with the small cirrus wisps or lounge against a great bank of nimbus stratus clouds to watch the changing colours of star rise. The other planets and minor objects of his system needed his attention too -- when a sphere was untended as long as his Companion sphere had been, there were bound to be consequences in the imbalance of the quality of the light it produced -- but Flaxnor had become his jewel.

He was back on Earth for Kathleen's 40th birthday party. She held it in the local hotel, surrounded by a mixture of the people she loved and the people who held her in high esteem. Basil and Robin were there, with their families, so were friends from half a lifetime lived well, Johnny, returned from university and Sophie, about to take her A-levels and sporting pink spiky hair and a ring through her nose. Two tables were full of local dignitaries and journalists, people Kathleen knew through the sanctuary or had lobbied for things it needed and then there were colleagues from work and some grateful owners of her patients.

Kathleen herself was dressed in greens and blues that made the most of her eyes. She no longer looked young; her face showed its age in laughter lines and her brown hair was liberally flecked with grey. She looked amazing.

Sirius leaned back against a wall, out of the way of the serving staff and Sophie pulled faces at him when Kathleen could not see. This was what he had gained, more importantly this was what Kathleen had gained when he had not swept her away in her distress after her divorce. When he looked at the results, the living proof of a life of strength, humour and goodwill, he could not regret it.

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When Kathleen was 43, she took a well deserved, relaxing holiday on Flaxnor. Sirius barely needed to create air bubbles for her any more; the planet's atmosphere held no breathable air in its own right, but its precious `Kahleen' could hardly move without clouds and vapours pushing oxygen towards her. She said it gave her an astonishing sense of freedom; she could jog on the molten crust of a lava field, knowing the planet would not burn her, or hang in the sky, looking over an alien landscape, knowing she need not fear the height or the air.

She spent time with Sirius too, of course, and those were some of his favourite times, talking with Kathleen in his own home system. They were talking now, reminiscing about past years, leaning with their elbows propped on a golden cloud bank overlooking the blue storm and watching the great spheres of Sirius Prime and its white Companion rise in the morning sky.

"Your Companion sphere is still empty," said Kathleen. "Do you ever miss having another luminary to be your consort?"

How to answer that? "No," he said, telling the honest truth, if not the complete truth. "I couldn't bring a strange luminary into this system now; they wouldn't understand Flaxnor and I don't think I'd want to share it with anyone I didn't already love."

"That's an answer about your system," said Kathleen. "I asked about you."

He said nothing.

"Do you not want a Companion? Or... I don't want to presume, but... are you still saving it for me?"

"You weren't this pushy when you were a girl," he grumbled, refusing to look at her.

She twisted where she rested on the clouds, pulling her legs up under her in an adorable little flip movement that brought her around to where she could look into his eyes. "Sirius," she said in recognition, "you do still want me."

"I got it badly wrong, 20 years ago," he said. "You have a life to live, a fantastic life and I want you to have it. Well, that and I thought you'd attack me if I tried pulling another stunt like I did when you married Ian."

"You might have been right," she said, grinning. "I'd certainly have tried. But in more recent years... I thought you'd thought better of it, that you'd decided that teaching a human to be a luminary was just too difficult. I've been trying to get my courage together for the last two years to ask whether one day I'd find another luminary in your Companion sphere."

"I never really gave up," he admitted. "I haven't been lying to you about respecting your life, but a human creature's life span is so short... I thought that perhaps, at the end of your life, you might come with me then. I hadn't planned to ask you this soon, but will you think about it? You've got decades yet before you'll need to decide."

"I asked you this years ago, but you never really gave me a straight answer. Sirius, are you in love with me?"

"Yes," he said.

"And you thought you'd always be my last choice."

"Yes," he said again. "But I hoped -- I still hope -- that I would be a choice in the end."

"Oh, Sirius!" She sighed, and he thought he heard all the depths of her passionate heart in her voice. "You're not my last choice, never that."

"But, but..." he stammered, as inarticulate as a Cepheid, "your life, your work... all the other things you wanted."

"I was 23 years old! I'd just started living as an adult. And I loved you, in the way that I'd loved Leo as a child, but I didn't really know you, Sirius, not the way I do now. And to be honest, you didn't know me that well either -- just look at the restricted life you were offering me!"

"But things are different now?" He asked, scarcely daring to hope.

Her smile softened. "Of course they are. You've become my greatest companion, I share things with you I never even told Ian, when we're apart I still think of almost everything I see in terms of how you will react when I tell you. I love you too Sirius, I'm in love with you too... I'm in love with you too," she repeated, wonder and delight spreading across her face.

Matching joy and wonder welled up inside Sirius, but he owed it to Kathleen to say, "Wait, wait; you've got to be practical. You have a life, commitments, people you love, you can't just give it all up to run away with me."

"No," she agreed, thoughtfully, "I can't just abandon everything, but you are worth some sacrifices. The surgery can find another vet and the rescue centre is on a really sound footing now; they have enough other trustees and professional helpers that they can succeed without me. Johnny and Sophie are both through university and building lives of their own... I can't walk out on them -- Helen too -- but they don't need me constantly anymore. And the three of them already know that luminaries exist; would I be able to go back to visit?"

"Of course," he said. "It's Sol's call really, but he's put up with me traipsing in and out of his system for the last 30 years; I'm sure he'd be far more welcoming of you. As long as you didn't start telling half of humanity about the Empyrean, of course."

"Of course," she said. "People wouldn't believe me anyway, and if they did they'd probably start forming some kind of crazy cult. So long as I can still see the kids -- perhaps we could even bring them here to visit. We can tell everyone else that I've emigrated to Australia. And I'm assuming that you're not planning to put me on a pedestal and stare at me all day long. I'll get to be with you and there's a lot of work, worthwhile work, for a luminary to do in the system and on this planet."

"You mean it," he said. "You really mean it. You want to become my Companion, and you want to do it now, today."

"I want to become your Companion," she agreed, "and I want to do it today."

Sirius' heart was full to overflowing. He reached out to touch the power of the Zoi and brought it gently, so carefully, to rest on Kathleen.

Its intensity flowed over her, bathed her in light, greens and golds reflecting off Flaxnor's outer atmosphere. Her being changed in ripples of power, her inner light transmuted to real radiance, her own effluence shining out of her true nature, even before she received the external dignities that would be her due as Sirius' Companion. Then Sirius stretched a hot green hand towards his white Companion sphere and its pearly potential blazed towards her in a single powerful ray that caught her up from head to foot, shining so brightly that even Sirius was dazzled.

When the light faded Kathleen was tall and radiant, confirmed in all her effluence and dignities. Great feathery wings arched over her back, her grey-brown hair was transformed to plumes of white fire, but her face was her own, familiar and beloved and entirely Kathleen. The white glow of Sirius' Companion star was well known to him, but it was transformed in Kathleen to something which made spurts of fire and passion shine all over her with a passion and a zeal for life his first Companion had never had.

She stepped forward then paused, feeling the changes in her body for the first time. Sirius saw the delight spread over her face as she realised she had wings, wings which she spread to fly towards him and they rose in circles through the planet's atmosphere until they were hovering against the deep rich black of the firmament.

He reached out to touch her; he need have no fear anymore that his fires would consume her. He drew her into his arms and she went gladly. At last he could entwine himself around her, merge with her radiance. For the first time ever he bent his head to hers and her lips met his in a fierce kiss.