In your world there are magnetic lines that draw your needle North. Polaris and the Great Bear guide you home from clear moonlit skies, so that you may stumble into your hearth at night. I was told that in my heart was a compass rose, with a needle like yours, pointed and true. But my directions are undifferentiated. Ursa hides behind dark clouds and the magnetosphere is interrupted by the fiercest of solar winds. The needle fights to find North caught in an endless loop. The way home is unknown. But somewhere I know you are waiting for me to arrive, for the storms to pass. You would wait a thousand years. And though my compass is broken, I am reaching out my arms to find my way through the brush. And someday I will find you.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.