This is my entry for Contest 60 for Weekly Wattpad Contests.

"Child, look up. What do you see?" a voice rasped.

I lifted my head. The night was a dark midnight blue, almost black. Glistening specks dotted the dark expanse, whilst a sickle moon hung almost daintily, tilting her milky complexion skywards.

A stray breeze fluttered towards me, tousling strands of ginger hair. It twirled and swished like a flamenco dancer, clapping in its childish joy.

The voice  rasped again, "Well, child, what do you see?" A pause, "Tell me".

"Things. Some things, Mother Lannay."

Mother Lannay wavered her wrinkled old finger at the stars and sky. They twinkled at Mother Lannay; Old Mother Lannay who was said to have been born under this same night sky under the same milky moon. The same Mother Lannay that stood under the same sky and moon many decades later.

"Well, you know. When I was a little girl, eight or seven, I looked out of the window. My ma walked towards me and told me, to look at the four stars over there. The four that are pretty bright and make a long diamond sort of shape," Mother Lannay pursed her lips as she tried to find the said stars.

"Well, I remembered this pretty well, you know." Mother Lannay sighed, after searching for the stars for minutes.

"Stars don't seem to be there now. Doesn't matter, every tale must be finished, that was what I was told a long time ago," Mother Lannay sucked in the frigid night air through her yellow crooked teeth.

"You see, Vinnie, my ma said to me, 'Olive, dear, those four stars were there when I was born! But that wasn't very peculiar 'bout 'em, most were there before I was born. You hear 'bout old King Joseph Weiller, terrible man he was, your pop told me. Did horrible unspeakable things, he did. Went out and about chopping heads and cutting off limbs for afternoon tea.'

Once he bought 'bout a poor lad with one eye and took his ceremonial sword sliced the lad's head off. Of course, lopping was after chopping his poor limbs as fine as blades of grass and gouging out with his bare hands, the other eye! Those nobles that strut about in the finest shirts and pants call us, poor nobodies, uncivilized! Let me tell you, we can't help it, but that pot-bellied king can certainly help with his uncivility.

Well, I was just rambling, wasn't I, Vinnie? Well, you shan't hear anymore.

My ma had recounted from pop, had told her these words were written on the palace wall; Four will shine the night sky when the old fart's head has been lopped off at midnight.

Well, pop told my ma that the old fart's head may have or not been lopped at midnight, but those four stars appeared that night. Shining through the devil's cursed black fire and the tiny window that pop stuck his head out like every night before he went to sleep.

So that's the tale I tell you tonight, Vinnie. The one about the four stars, the day that some redundant king's head was lopped off like every single head he lopped off." Mother Lannay grinned.

We both looked, up. The night shimmered as the stars glittered whilst the sickle moon was swaying in precarious balance.

"Did you believe your ma?" I asked.

Mother Lannay gave a toothy smile, "Not really. But a tale's a tale and all tales must be told."