💎 Building Up My/Our Shadow

I was at the precipice of everything, and I was laughing.

Only moments before, I had thought it the end. A fingertip still rested on the button that had silenced an alarm; an alarm that, even in the grip of fate, I had found annoying. I never liked it, even as it screamed the clarion call to what would have been impending doom.

A stuck thruster had thrown the little SD-08 I'd stolen into a spin. The life I clung so desperately onto in my first long months of recovery left me as I surrendered myself to it - a poetic end, I thought, that I'd return to the place I cheated death, only to find it once again. I can't deny I wanted it. They, however, decided otherwise.

I could still see them beyond the glass panes of the cockpit. Ethereal, curled in the tapestries of our shared history. My family. Spirits bleeding from a gash in the flesh of the universe. Laughs turning to sobs now, I covered my face, shameful, distraught. They knew, didn't they? I was a coward, surely, that I'd so eagerly accept it, even...

I felt hands on my plastic-clad shoulders. Even as they heaved, the grip was gentle, comforting, warming. Everything ached. My neck, my eyes, my heart. I just wanted to be with them again. There was a world beyond this one, but here I was, a broken doll held aloft on silicon strings. I belonged there, not here. Why was I still here?

Fingers grazed my forehead as the last of my tears broke off into the cabin. My hands carried the rest into my lap, and I sat there in intermittent silence broken only by sniffles and coughs. My eyes were still wrung shut, but as the unseen hand curled my hair, I was tempted to open them.

Leant over my crumpled form was someone I recognised, an elder of our stewardship, though I could not recall their name. Their gentle smile radiated such compassion. Within it curled a story; the story of the Starchild, the One-Beyond-Here-and-There who would lose everything and everything again, but continue to love and in turn be loved. No words fled their mouth, but I understood regardless.

I was not chosen, nor did I choose this path, but it was mine to travel. I was anointed in stardust and the blood of the universe, that the crystal fires would not burn me. I would be alone together in a place beyond forever, with strangers' stars to guide me, and I would find myself, here, at the precipice of everything.

Rising in my seat though still shaking from the effort of crying, I embraced the apparition. Familiar cloth begot the familiar smells of incense and books and old stone, memories of time spent with family and wandering the corridors of city-ships. I was resolute as I let go, and the figure rose, returned to the sides of the others awaiting them at the gash in the universe. It was fading now, the wisps that once rose from it in great flares now only curling eminences against the darkness of space. I wanted so badly to call out. Will I ever see you again?

Again, no words were spoken, but they responded in kind, a hazy coil of context rising from the wound before me. You will find us in every aspect. When plants shiver in an autumn's breeze, when water rumbles in pipes and dances in streams, when thunder claps and lightning casts its searing path, we will be there with you, always.

Go into forever, starchild. The universe loves you.

With that, they were gone, the light of distant stars rushing in to fill the void. I didn't stare idly for long; in a moment I was already flipping breakers, polygonating the transponder for the distant Apollo, trying to think up an excuse to tell the poor docking manager who'd surely noticed a ship missing by now.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was ready to live.