The Echo of Stars
Always for Donder
version 15th, August 2026
In the Tiny Kingdom, where two princes once lived, love didn't need to be spoken. It was simply there, every day, like the ground beneath their feet.
And then, one night, everything changed. It happened so suddenly that there was no time to understand it. Where there had once been two princes, there was now only one.
The white prince, Donder, had been called to another kingdom. A kingdom they could not see, a place where other adventures were waiting for him.
His passing left the Queen, King and Prince Dingus without words. The Tiny Kingdom felt devastatingly empty. His basket by the door still held the shape of him, and his collar hung from the hook where it always had. His shape remained pressed into the blanket, his smell still caught in the wool, while the small, warm weight that had once filled all of it was gone.
The Queen went outside that night because staying in the castle, surrounded by everything that was still his, was more than she could bear.
She found Prince Dingus at the top of the hill they used to climb as three.
The Queen sat down beside her son beneath a sky that looked exactly as it always had and yet felt completely different.
Neither of them spoke. They sat together, shoulder against fur, letting the grief be as enormous as it was.
After a while, Dingus lifted his head.
“Mom?”
“Yes, lieverd?”
“Look.”
He pointed upward.
Among the countless familiar stars, a new one had appeared.
They both saw it.
The Queen reached for his paw and held it. The star shone brighter than the others, bright enough that for a few minutes they simply sat beneath it and let its light reach them.
The grief was still there. Nothing about that had changed.
Yet sitting on the hill together, they could feel Donder near, the way you sometimes sense something at the periphery of your vision, there for a moment before you turn your head.
Later, the Queen would carry stars with her too: one carved from mother-of-pearl and another, tiny and golden, almost hidden in its band.
A way to carry something of that night close to her skin.
And from then on, whenever the Queen and Prince Dingus looked up at the stars, there was one more reason to keep looking.