Speak Not Of The End Of The World

by Shaslan

Luminescence

The entire Taelo, suspended in space. Burning with all the radiance of a star, lit up like a tiny sun in its own right as the light of hundreds of thousands of souls combined into an inferno.

All around was darkness and echoing emptiness. A limitless wasteland, where nothing lived and nothing died. Only the Taelo mattered. Only the Taelo shone.

And it was as beautiful as all the sunrises on Home had ever been.

Even after all this time, that first moment of entry was still enough to steal away his senses. The beauty of all that concentrated life — so far as the people knew, all the life in the universe, all gathered in one place. It was worth losing a few moments to the wonder of it.

But Laotyn had a job to do, and he was a consummate professional. With only the palest tint of cornflower-blue wistfulness, he shifted his tendrils in the receptors, and turned his attention outwards.

All was as he had left it at the end of his previous shift. The Taelo, blazing like a miniature sun, and the huge swathes of black space around it. They were passing another star — passing in the loosest sense, given how huge the distance dividing it and them — and up ahead, the beacon of Issia, constant as ever.

Seven annual cycles of observing. Of watching that little dim light grow steadily brighter. The Taelo was almost there. They would reach their new planet within Laotyn’s lifetime — something he had once believed impossible.

He passed his gaze away from Issia itself, straining his senses to their limit to catch a glimpse of the planet itself. It was dark there, lifeless as any other hunk of rock the Taelo passed — especially with the fiery heat of the Taelo itself always there, drowning out everything else — but…today something was different.

Today there was a shape there. A sphere, just like the Taelo. Just like the planet. Outlined dimly, very dimly, in shining silver light. Just a tracing of it, just a whisper. But it was something that had not been there seven days ago, when last it had been his turn to observe Issia.

This was new.

Even as he watched, it dimmed and faded, leaving the planet the same dark silhouette that it had been before. But it had happened. That momentary spark had been real.

Lyia, when he told her, shone red-orange with excitement. <<Really? Really? Light? Laotyn, no one else has spotted anything like this. This is huge. You have to show me!>>

With palpitating nerves, he did so. The two of them squished into one pod was unpleasant, but Laotyn watched the play of colours across Lyia’s surface in an agony of suspense.

So when she flushed a deep, disappointed indigo, Laotyn deflated to.

<<You don’t see it?>>

<<No,>> she said, almost crushed beneath the weight of the word. <<Nothing.>>

<<Oh.>> He wanted to brush her aside, to check again — to be certain he had not dreamt it. But there was no room, and clearly he had been wrong. Lyia would not lie.

Her dark colour gradually gave way to something lighter and more wistful. <<It would have been something, wouldn’t it? To be the ones to find that Issia’s planet has native plant life or something.>> She gave a quiver of laughter and shook two tendrils at him theatrically. <<Imagine, aliens.>>

Laotyn did his best to laugh as well.

<<Never mind,>> Lyia reassured him. <<It might just be that you have sharper senses for this sort of thing than I do. And the closer we get the clearer it will be. Keep watching. It might turn up again.>>

Dipping his body in agreement, Laotyn slid back through the algae wall to free up space for her to exit, too. He would keep watching. And when it happened again, he would be ready.

Comments

[Bicyclette]

Her dark colour gradually gave way to something lighter and more wistful. <<It would have been something, wouldn’t it? To be the ones to find that Issia’s planet has native plant life or something.>> She gave a quiver of laughter and shook two tendrils at him theatrically. <<Imagine, aliens.>>

hehe, of course the ponies (i assume) would be the mysterious aliens to them! very intriguing, with hints at how the two narratives here will intersect, and that it may not be on a level that is literal and material