Circular symbol design with quotation

The brass dial came back from the Mint on Tuesday, and the wheelwright swears every circle is true to a hair's breadth, though I have never known a man to be honest about anything with a compass in his hand. You asked why the Queen's astronomers keep the rim so crowded with arcs. I have stopped trying to explain it. They only nod and say the sky is written in circles, and a message read from the centre outward cannot be lied about.

Last month the old Warden Ambrose asked me to set the dial for the Midwinter watch. I spent three nights on it, lamp guttering, copying each notch onto vellum. On the fourth night I found that the dots inside the lesser rings were not decoration but a count of hours, and that the lines through the middle joined into words only when read as the stars do, shifting with the season. Someone in the Sable Gate had cut the first line long ago: I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

I read it three times before I understood I was meant to keep watch that night, not sleep. So I climbed the tower with a cloak and a cold pie, and I did not come down until the Pleiades slid behind the eastern wall. Nothing dramatic happened. The dial simply turned under my hand, the lines met where they should, and the bells of Carrow rang the hour before they were due.

Burn this letter, as you always tell me to, but keep the pie tin. The stars are very bright this winter, and I find I am no longer afraid of them.

Your sister, Isolde