Soon the end of the year will come, but before the fireworks begin, Saturn at the end of Pisces lifts his gaze to the sky. The Centaur was there as before, and he sighs with relief. He has watched the same scene three centuries ago. He thinks how the stars will always be dearer to him than the “planets” the Greeks rightly called “wanderers.” “Ah, if only a day without them, so I could exist in divine peace with this sky and the mountains below, and that sparrow on the windowsill…”One of those “wanderers”—to whom the name perhaps fits best—was just rubbing her eyes, battling the sun’s rays. She yawned briefly and glanced at her phone. Time to buy gifts.

Venus in Sagittarius was looking forward to the holidays. Gift-giving was for her a true ceremony of joy, almost a ritual. Guided by an inner compass, she could wander into a forgotten corner of some city and find a shop where time seemed to have stood still. Or she would craft gifts by hand for days. Each one had to come alive! She had to breathe soul into every object before passing it on. She loved to explain this with pantheistic quotes, and if she could choose her own name, she would call herself Anima—the one who breathes life, who kindles flames, who bestows vitality on people, things, and moments alike. Ever since she could remember, it mattered to her to spread joy, to melt icy glances with the warmth she’d been given, to turn the stone in someone’s chest into ember, to chase fear away forever with spontaneous hugs that arrived without warning. She simply—dared to. Her laughter approached from afar, and there all control gave way. Shackles broke, chains loosened, shoelaces untied themselves. Everything squealed with merry freedom.

That morning, notifications poured in endlessly. Her exchanges with others always sounded as if you’d just run into her on the street corner. She burned away distance with her open, immediate thoughts. And everyone was there. Mother and sister and girlfriends who had ventured out into the world—now from Munich, New York, Vietnam—with photos where no one commented on the landscape, the weather, or the food, but rather: “Whoaaa, wine at a business meeting! Ahem… who’s the gentleman on the left?! Enjoyyyy! NO ALTERNATIVE!” Her chats were always fireworks of heart, fire, exclamation marks, three-minute voice messages where she’d yell “I missss youuu” for fifteen seconds straight or sing a song she’d just invented.

Everyone thought they were the closest to her in the world. And they were. In their own way. Because she was there for everyone: at three in the morning, at noon, at midnight, as if nothing in the world could be more important. But when it came to actually meeting, everyone wondered why they still couldn’t pin her down for that coffee. Friends accepted it and knew that until the very last moment, nothing was certain.

Ex-partners with whom she’d once had “that thing”—the least like a serious relationship and most like chance exchanges of passion and joy—were there when she needed help moving, borrowing a charger, fixing her laptop, or she’d send them a link: “Seen this?” Bewildered but accustomed to her spontaneous sparklers—appearing, shining, vanishing—they left the door ajar in case inspiration struck her again. And she thought that proved they were friends. That’s why she returned with permission to disappear and reappear. To say “love yoooou” casually without anyone misinterpreting it. But when one of them, met in some club, threw at her feet: “You changed my life,” she no longer heard the loud music or the crowd—just that word “life,” her heart threatening to explode, so she turned her head away, raised an eyebrow, and said: “Mate, you’re drunk!”

The guy she’d friend-zoned faster than you can say “cheese” wrote to her every birthday at 00:01. While her girlfriends smelled something more than friendship, she’d convince them the man was just polite and kind.

To her nephew she’d said she’d be there no matter what he needed. When the day came, she appeared in fifteen minutes with a solution, but when he started messaging more casually, she wrote: “I’m here when it’s burning! And when it’s not—go live, breathe! Loves you, your firefighter aunt ”

The girl from work she’d stood up for in an awkward situation, once everything calmed down, came up all touched and said: “You’re my best friend ever.” And she started avoiding her.

But to messages, calls, and emails, she always replied. Without delay. Either immediately or never. When she didn’t know what to say, she’d send hearts and emojis.

It didn’t take Saturn long to devise the perfect trap for her. Time was short; soon he would leave Pisces, but before that—he had to finally confront her with the truth.

So that morning, he sent a message too.

But his message had no emojis. No hearts or fire. No emoticons at all. And he didn’t reply right away. He asked nothing, demanded nothing. He sent no music, no memes, no jokes to make them laugh together. Everything always ended the same: whatever she wrote, suggested, offered—help, laughter, gifts, understanding—Saturn remained untouched. Not happy. Not angry. Not surprised. Simply untouched, and that hurt the most.

She was lost.

She, who had spent her whole life being the answer to everyone else’s silence, who ran to fill others’ emptiness, suddenly found herself alone in the infinite void of Pisces, floating like her messages left unread, hanging like decorations on a Christmas tree on January 23rd—when the magic is gone and they bring joy to no one. Every attempt to thaw Saturn, to cheer him, to brighten his day, was like striking a match underwater. He stayed silent longer than she knew silence was possible. Long messages she’d eventually delete and replace with a short “Ugh, tough day.” Something pressed hard in her chest and ached; she thought of fleeing, but how do you flee when no one is chasing you? Because she leaves when they cry, threaten, beg, when they promise too much. When they need her more than she can give. When they love her more than she can receive. When they expect. When they get too close. Then she knows how to run. Catch the night train, call a taxi, walk—just so the keys are always with her.

Saturn saw she was about to slip away, already climbing out through the skylight of psycho-philosophical contemplations, so he quickly arranged for another message to reach her—this time from her mother. But it was empty, one of those accidentally sent. She smiled at first, but a moment later that blank message looked like a cry for help, the kind people send in trouble hoping the recipient will call. “Is Mom okay?” Panic hit her in an instant. And then she felt a sharp cramp and stab near her heart, because that empty message was a mirror carrying the truth and the real

s i l e n c e

she could no longer ignore. Saturn let her see what is invisible in Pisces. To see and hear clearer than anything:

“Look, here is your mother’s silence where your joy had no power, where you were never enough, where you were simply too much; here your words and smiles choked so as not to ripple the pain, not to provoke aggression, anger, drama, lest you say something that would make Father write another farewell letter, and Mother look at you like a convict serving your sentence while you do whatever you want! Here is where you first heard that everything would be different if you didn’t exist! So you withdrew, became a professional at vanishing. Here is the emptiness you never managed to fill, the life you couldn’t change, and the GUILT you carried away that night when you fled forever. Here is the guilt that kept you from going too deep into relationships—because that means being needed, and you know you won’t be there when the water rises and floods. That it means you’ll have to leave and abandon someone in silence again. And you’ll be guilty once more. That’s why you always kept one foot out the door. Neither here nor there. Close enough for your voice to be heard, far enough to disappear before anyone notices you’re gone. Here is your mother’s ‘You’re all I have!’ and the tear at the door, the heavy sobs, your back as you leave her, which is why you run from those to whom you could be—EVERYTHING; here is her coldness you learned first of all to feel in contact with others, which a single misplaced comma can carry straight to your bones; here is why you never gave your heart to anyone, and that’s why it will remain forever young—the heart of a nineteen-year-old girl who long ago swore never to love anyone, never to let anyone be her everything, never to let anyone love her so much that she alone would be enough for them.

From the beginning, it was only your silence.

You were the one who stayed silent the loudest of them all.

You took on the silence and remained completely alone with guilt that was never yours.

So that by fleeing from it—you forever flee from yourself.”

As if all strength left her body in a second, she collapsed to the floor and struggled to breathe. The panic attack turned into a roar of grief, anger, and pain that did what was needed—it let the heat return to her body in fiery lashes from her heart all the way to her head and the little toe on her foot. The pressure in her chest vanished, though her eyes still burned for a while. She no longer had to run, no longer carry a burden that had never been hers. She could still chase freedom, come and go as she pleased, but not to atone or save others.

Saturn was a lighthouse. Not the kind that casts far beams so ships find their way. But the lighthouse where a candle flame flickered—just enough to tell her, “See. You can burn like me, even when the whole world sinks. But first you must illuminate yourself.” He looked at the chains of guilt she left behind, which she had carried her entire life! Simply because one terrible night she decided to be happy, to follow joy instead of sorrow! And she was! But with the burden of owing everyone for it. That if she had a smile—everyone must have one. That if she had something, others must have it too. Somewhere he was glad she had managed to break herself, because she gave so much freedom to everyone while deeply blackmailing herself; it truly seemed to him she could have continued life as if in a penal institution.

Saturn’s work in Pisces was not to change Mars or Venus. Nor to teach them a lesson, to make them wiser. Especially not to punish them—that awaits when he enters Aries. Only to free them from the burden that was never theirs to carry, so they could freely be what they ARE—which is THE HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD. Without dilemma, without doubt, without fear, without wishing to be someone else, something else, somewhere else.

Now he could quietly move on.