Sometimes she dreamed of a child, dark and shining as she stood, haloed against an endless twilight. Sometimes, she took the form of a hundred wizened old women; stoop- shouldered and gray haired, surrounded by a long dead expanse. Sometimes a hot, howling wind would ride upon the skies for days and years, mourning the grand cities and oceans that had once filled the sphere. From time to time, a single coherent and accusing thought would whisper across endless bone yards of ancient trees.
She as alone. Always alone.
This was the enduring nightmare of the navigator - the guilt that had followed his race for countless millenia. A terrible crime had been committed by his ancient forefathers. The Vir’noth had once abandoned their Goddess - left her to the most terrible fate one can imagine.The eighteen-year human was dreaming through the darkness again. Inside her mind, the past was alive. In her dreams she was always running through those dark caverns. Her father’s frantic voice chased her into the daylight as she ran and she ran. Behind her, walls crumbles and suddenly there was daylight and behind her, there was nothing. And then, there was her voice, screaming and screaming through the great darkness.
At the helm of the small ship once called Traveler, by those who cared to name such things, was a spidery facsimile of a man. Green eyed, with shining white locks of hair that fell to his shoulders, he sometimes seemed like an endless green shadow at the helm. From the dimly lit deck of their spartan ship, he stared into the inky blackness. Eventually, the mental screams bouncing around inside his mind began to fade. Behind him, on her sleeping berth Nessia began to stir. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief and continued plotting their course toward the hidden star.
Nessia opened her eyes to the confines of the rattling ship. She realized her palm burned from gripping something ever so tightly. It was the key. A dusty old metal box was all they had recovered from the ruins that crushed the bodies of her parents. It had taken her months to finally open the box, knowing that the key was most likely what they had found. In her mind’s eye she saw her mother’s hand drifting idly along the cavern wall, accidentally pushing on a mechanism they had not discovered before… that box was the reason they had died. The strange, very old amulet had been tucked away inside the box. According to the old religious records it was a guidance system. The sphere was a map, to what Nessia suspected to be the greatest discovery of all time, a forgotten star system . A map to paradise- the place of eternal daylight. It would have been the ultimate archaeological find. Her parents would have…
In her mind somewhere the twelve-year-old orphan was still screaming and screaming and screaming...
Nessia suddenly noticed that the sphere was getting warm. She opened her palm. The tiny pinpoints of light within were glowing brightly. “Navigator?”
“I am here Nessia.”
Sometimes, she half expected him not to answer. Yet she was certain he always would. He was her constant companion, no matter where she asked him to take her. She was certain; no human being would ever be as loyal.
“Look,” she said from behind him. “The pattern is complete.”
“Yes,” he said. But the Navigator’s stare was directed at the screen before them.
The darkness was thinning, the claustrophobic lack of light rapidly falling away. Nessia sighed shakily. She could feel them already. The drowning rhythm of twin luminaries that pulsated maddeningly in her blood and within the sphere she held. She looked to the Navigator. He was not unaffected. He glowed almost bright green before fading to an ethereal shadowy blue.
She suddenly found herself wondering what his reason was. Why was he on this pilgrimage with her? What did he have to atone for?
Entering the system from the void was like slowly waking from death. The light was blinding but soon she she realized, there wasn’t very much light; only the weak golden and blue hues of two very old and very tired stars. Between them, a very large sphere was trapped in an eternal half-night. They were dying. “This not what I expected.” Nessia whispered, dismayed.
The Navigator remained silent for a very long time before turning to her. “No, it is not,” he murmured.
The vessel touched down on spindly, bug- like legs, stirring up an enormous cloud of dust particles. Once the dust cleared, there was only silence. Not even one sliver of wind stirred. The Mind watched with detached interest. The silent ones would soon overcome their fear of the half night. They would soon make the music that eased Her on going lethargy. They would bring life back, if only for the most fleeting of moments. They were not the first to come, and they would perhaps, not be the last; not as long as this waning system wobbled on in its endless dance of death. She sighed softly and went back to Her waiting.
They stood together, between their ship that seemed so frail and tiny and the dry brown horizon. The alien silence seemed so oddly empty that neither of the two travelers had spoken since they touched that hard earth. It seemed almost unholy to break a thing that was so sad and rare. Left to their thoughts, they each began contemplating things they had neglected to consider before. The necessary thoughts that had been superseded by the obsession, with which they carried out this quest, began to surface. Nessia remembered the first day. The truth that preceded her terrible nightmares and the grief that had made her forget everything else no longer seemed so frightening. How distant that agony seemed. The deaths of her parents became insignificant in comparison to the demise of an entire world that was fifty times the size of the planet on which she was born. She kept thinking of the sky and the earth and the endless darkness that hid this world away from everything else. Why did the ones who charted the star-maps abandon this place? How long ago had it started dying?
While she stared across the sullen bareness, more questions came. She turned to Navigator. His green skin seemed so pale and tired. He was thin- too thin, even for a Vir’noth. “Navigator,” she spoke softly afraid a whisper could become a thunderous shout in this silence.
“Yes, Nessia.”
“You knew all along.” Her voice was resigned- no room left for bitter accusation. “You knew I would not find paradise here.”
“I had my suspicions.”
“Why then, did you humor me?”
He bowed his head slightly, looking down at her in that odd way that he sometimes would. “You sought to honor the memory of my two dearest friends. I thought it a noble journey.”
He looked away suddenly, avoiding her eyes. He had never done that before - never tried to lie to her. He was overcome a by surge of guilt that welled up inside his nerve centers. He flexed his long fingertips forcing the discomfiting emotion away. He waited in silence- waited for her to realize the truth, hoping she would not force him to tell it.
Nessia’s mind was whirling. What was it that her father had said of the Vir’noth?
My dear, though they do not live very long, they are very wise and the race itself is very old. The Vir'noth forget nothing- what one knows, they all know.
There were so many memories tumbling about in her head. So many fleeting bits and pieces of her past. Why had she buried them? Why had she buried the most important truth of all? She had been Twelve years old. Old enough to recognize the importance of such a thing. It had been the year of her parents' death. How could she have forgotten? Once again, years and tears of anguish rose up in her throat, almost choking her. But, this time, the sorrow was for her friend… her true friend. Her only friend. “Why did you come here with me?”
The question was empty. It went unanswered. She would have smiled, had her heart not been breaking. True to form, the Navigator never answered questions to which the answer was already known. But in her head the final refrain of the old, scratchy funeral dirge she had last heard six years before shrieked and shrieked in her head. To die…to die… to die
“How many years?” She demanded shakily. “How many years of your life did I take away from you?”
He smiled, looking at her once more- they way he sometimes would. “Your parents were honored by my people. Do you know why?”
“No.”
“They sought what we had been seeking for thousands of human years. It mattered to them, in the same way that it matters to us.”
“This world?” She frowned in confusion. “How could that be?”
He nodded. “Our original world.”
Humans feared death so much. He wanted to show her, how the cycle of life works. Everything dies and lives again. Everything that dies becomes the material for something yet to be born. Everything dies but nothing really ends.
“I wanted you to see. I came to end this world, so that a new one may be born.”
“How?”
“Return with me to the ship.”
The Mind watched and listened as the strangers came to terms with the past. The green child had seemed vaguely familiar. There was a tiny stirring within the vast memory of a race of small creatures that had scurried timidly amongst the endless grasslands of the smallest continent. They had evolved much over hundreds of millennium. A fleeting memory of thousands of flying vessels taking to the skies... the final exodus. How odd, She thought, that it was the They had returned after all. She sighed, stirring up the wind across ten continents.
The artifact that the child carried around her neck was a simple energy weapon but applied correctly, it would produce a blast forceful enough to restore the balance. She began to gather her strength, directing all the minute traces of life on the sphere into one central point. The goddess had one final task. This new purposefulness filled her with a long forgotten sensation- joy. The sense of agitation was fading. The end was finally coming. She had grown so very tired of waiting.
© Tonya R Moore s story is pretty abstract, even for me. I wrote it a very long time ago. I don't think it's complete, but I don't remember where I was supposed to be going with it at all. Nevertheless, I hope it was worth reading.
