this impossible thousand years [1200]

[cocoa]

for this adopt


Timeline/section notes:
-Some are "dreams"
-Itacilized = skips into the past or thoughts.
Based off of a 0 - 1,000 year scale. A general age meter:
0: start of war [1000 theoretical end, but it doesn’t actually go straight to 1000];
childhood: yr37 - 237
(20’s~30): 237 - 437
(30’s-50’s), 437 - 837
(50’s-end/life), 837-1037

Credits:
Art, Character Design: Vanillasaur
Writing, Concepts: Colour54

[cocoa]

The lights stuttered, transforming the walls to a blink of white and black; the ship groaned, one great, longing ache that bloomed from the depths of the engines themselves. Zeillese did not know that groan: had never longed to know it. Rather, she had feared it, like every child who grew up upon these great steel ships, forged from the strongest materials, and engineered by the most brilliant of minds in the universe, the cyborgs.

Everyone knew this, but Zeillese knew it intimately: in her legs of black titanium, fueled by aether, a substance that shone bright, neon blue, unflattering as the species it fueled. She was a cyborg; those legs let her walk. The mechanical spine along her tail let her balance, and the connectors all through her body up to her ears fit it all together, as if she had never been broken at all.

Zeillese looked through her eyes; really looked through them, orange irises and black sclera; and realised she couldn’t move, that this - for all it seemed to be - was not her body. It was like a rolling script of film; the ship, breaking down around her; her feet, planted firmly, threateningly on the ground, her teeth bared in a snarl. Above the clamor of the end of the world, with her pulse pounding in her ears, she saw a dark smudge that slowly grew into focus: a Riwohr, that she knew with startlingly clarity, was her father. She knew this in the way she knew her blood was a vibrant orange, in the way her long whiskers fanned out in the same way as her father’s winding, shadowy limbs, in the way her pelt shifted like it had a burning, green galaxy within it, the same way her father came in and out of focus, and seemed to have unspeakable depths to his skin. His eyes were pin pricks, deep set in the shadowy void of a body, with the only clear points of focus to be the trio of appendages at the alien’s tail, tipped bright orange, the same as his, and her, blood. His voice was a chatter that Zeillese shouldn’t be able to understand if she was the same as everyone else; a piercing sound that was pitched above all sound, as if it was greater: as if deserved to be heard, but only by the greatest of beings, and only by itself.

He said, each with high, painstakingly pitched syllables, “So you end like this, Zeillese.” As if he had the right to know her name, to utter it in the forsaken language. “As a mistake,” he continued, bitterly.

Zeillese was suddenly struck out of her imprudence by fear. A disastrous, growing beast, stemming from her limbs, which remained frozen, as if this otherworldly Zeillese was already resigned to this fate. As her father grew in clarity, the atmosphere around her grew heavier and heavier, like the most terrible of her nightmares, the kind where he would split his jaws open and swallow her whole, like the most primitive of beasts. This moment felt like the end of her life, one come far too early. And for all it appeared to be, it was.

“A mistake,” he repeated, sharp, screeching. “To have you ever born, to have you join this failure of an organization. It is overdue you serve your fate, after all of these hundreds of years of running from it.”

“Who do you think you are?” Her lips spat, but it was not Zeillese speaking; it was some other, her, “to deem what fate is or isn’t? This life is - was, my destiny; my mother chose to let me live. Chose to not just throw me out the door because I was born paralyzed; chose to give me a chance, unlike you and your stupid alien ideologies don’t give me. You just want to control people, to control the universe; and you’ll only take something that is born and made the same as the rest of it. It’s a narrow minded way to think; have you ever wondered, of what good this place has done for people, for- for me?”

Her father seemed to phase through space and time, a shadowy menace made of the same fabric of the universe itself. “Have you wondered of what bad it has done? Riwohrs such as me, and our planets, have been destroyed to your race’s meddling. It is time you understand that,” that shrill voice seemed to whisper in her steel-plated ears, echoing off the walls, down the halls, and burning like feverish fire at the back of her head.

~*~

Year 354

Zeillese bolted upright, the sudden jolt straining her wires and sending an electric shock down to her toes. She shivered, violently in the way it sparked along the sweat on her limbs. She was too cold and too hot; her heart pounded, and her throat was full of rocks. She couldn’t breathe.

Stumbling out of bed, she planted her hands against the wall and took in deep breaths, wishing desperately for the dreadful feeling in her chest to go away. It hadn’t, but at least she could breathe. Her gaze wandered to the ground, and she realized she had been holding something in her sleep: that strange rock that was never quite black, and seemed to shift in her hand at times, like a physical ghost. Zeillese didn’t remember grabbing it before going to bed that night.

Curiously, she picked it up, and watched the way it seemed to nearly melt into her hand, yet kept a rock-like form. With one last glance, she placed it by her bedside table and got ready for the day.

Her work suit was sharp and simple; Zeillese was careful to always keep it well pressed and without creases. Briefly, she ran a comb through her orange tresses, making sure it was straight, not a hair out of line. She looked at herself both ways in the mirror; her four ears framed her face nicely. She looked as well as always, she would say to herself. For a moment, she touched the orange scales on her cheek, and felt their pearly hardness in contrast to her short, soft green fur.

She remembered, momentarily, the feeling of trying to scrape those scales off her skin, as if they were a plague. But they always grew back, as sure an existence as the orange of her blood, like a poison she had been cursed with. They grew over and between the space of her wiring when she slept. The technicians looked at it like a fungus when her joints had troubles, whispered reassuringly, “We’ll fix you right up,” and got out an assortment of sharp, metal instruments - pointy scissors and gleaming knives - and peeled them off like stubborn stickers.

Caught in the memory, she met eyes with herself in the mirror: she looked defeated, lost to bearing this mark on her skin. That’s me, Zeillese thought, I look perfect in every way but the things I can’t change.

~*~

The Cyborg Affiliation for the Progression of Science Headquarters (CAPS, for short), moved quickly and without any relent; Zeillese had grown up here, and now she worked as a full-fledged cyborg towards the war effort. Unlike most cyborgs, she did not choose to pursue science. Instead, she had studied history and military strategy. It was a choice that didn’t go unnoticed by some; a pull towards the leadership sect, and more subtly, a look into herself. Introspection was often something ignored by “caps”. Many had disabilities and did not like to look back at it, but rather work forward by scientifically changing those traits by becoming cyborgs. Zeillese thinks, at times, she was expected to work towards removing her scales and shifting pelt and whiskers through science, because she hated the aliens - the Riwohrs - just like the rest of them.

Zeillese did. She hated them. She just hated them enough to choose to attack them foremost at the source, rather than trying to change herself.

At least, that was what Zeillese hoped to do one day, if she could say she had any hopes at all at this point of her life. Her job was monotonous, taking her day down the same path every day: check in to the command board to sort early morning reports, train recruits in the afternoon, and perhaps in the evening she would either head out on a basic scouting task, often at the same areas, or go back and return to sorting reports and files.

Each day was typically the same, a page in a book repeated two hundred times. No-one minded her because nothing happened to her, and she barely minded herself. It was the kind of routine that dulled your mind and chipped away at the will of your soul.

Something was different about today, though. It was as if her dream was an earthquake on her life, displacing everything, from her memories to the way she flipped the pages of her files, her black claws carefully clipping the edges. When she looked at a new recruit, with a mechanical leg newly put in, she could see herself.

“Young, 7 months old, half-kalon, half-Riwohr,” was the whisper of the scientists, “paralyzed, waist-down, due to false genetic lineup. She’s going to need new legs and a lower spine; connectors to the brain, too.”

That memory of pain, entrenched into her brain, as her new lower body was connected to her brain. The hottest flame, blue - no, green, searing at the very back - the sides - no, everywhere in her brain, and suddenly that feeling, for the first time, of a whole body, four legs and all. Her limbs for her legs had been a child’s bright green plastic, like a toy attached by the hip.

The new recruit’s limb was a turquoise, less clunky, and full of more aether. Zeillese could see the bright blue shining through.

Zeillese turned, and was met with the face of her co-worker, who also helped to train the recruits. She had seen him a thousand times by now, but his mechanical, black titanium face and clear, shining projection of the CAPS military symbol greeted her eyes. The aether, and a gear; she had a similar halo on her back, when she had been initialized formally into the military. She had gotten her current black limbs, then, too.

She realized something, then, staring into brilliant blue eyes with one small, round and black static projection in each eye. In that dream… the faintness of color, like smudged, scraped away paint; the aether veins in her legs had been half-empty, hadn’t they?

It was a strange, impossible thing to dream, like nothing she would have ever imagined. Such a thing would mean the fall of an empire…

[cocoa]

Year 404

Her promotion came in the same swoop when she signed to agree to technological improvements. Those kind of forms were sent in every fifty years; you could either list an improvement you would want or have the scientists pick out something for you.

Zeillese hadn’t sent in a form, ever; she had only taken the standard military upgrade. But there was something bugging her in the back of her mind.

The way her fur sometimes spritzed, and stuttered in image. Galaxies were in her fur, and sometimes, her image shifted in a way that others would lose sight of her, and she’d suddenly be a few steps away.

Shouts of alarm -- suspicious glares -- curious eyes; the way her pelt shifted was too similar, if diluted, to the way Riwohrs could move through walls and change color and image at will.

Zeillese at times, scared herself, as a child; scrambling under the table and disappearing, before coming back into sight at her teacher’s shout.

The camouflage military survey robots that Zeillese knew of could turn invisible; they fascinated Zeillese as something the same as her, that she would run after with her green plastic limbs and galaxies in her fur. Yet, her paws always held those crystal aether-like teardrops; her fur, sketches of circuits and the static-y image of scales. Not the same way the robots disappeared completely and with a blink. No, Zeillese phased out of the world like a ghost, but always left traces. Most of the time, she was a mess of color, of constellations, and eventually others began to slowly ignore the glitch in their system.

It terrified Zeillese the same way she had seen in the fear in other young kalons’ eyes through the doors of Cyborg Surgery, when they realized their terribly burned paw would never work again, the way that they had thought it always should.

Zeillese thought, when they came out with their new metal paw, that they looked different. In her wide, young eyes, Zeillese knew their lives could have gone two different ways: a life of shame and disability, with the use of only one arm, or one of glory, perhaps, with the flashiness of their high-tech, amazingly different hand.

Zeillese shied away from getting herself fixed for years, because she had already been fixed. She didn’t need to be fixed again, she thought.

She was afraid, perhaps, of that concept of glory. Zeillese was not disabled; merely strange, and to not be strange felt like she would no longer be herself, in all of her child irrationality.

Zeillese stood at the kind of point in her life devoid of that child irrationality; in fact, Zeillese would say she was devoid of merely anything at all for years, staring at the same shimmering image in the mirror.

There was a nudge though, a change in the air. A nudging in the back of her mind of a crumbling ship. Invisibility was a kind of military trait that would be useful, and in that moment, Zeillese wanted to make herself useful: for all she felt like nothing much at all in those years, and for all she cared little, she wanted… she wanted that same fire that other girl that was her had in her imagination.

She requested this, and the cyborg scientists worked their magic.

Zeillese’s nickname had always been some variation of Zeil; as a child, her friends called to her from down the halls with that name. Sometimes, it sounded like Veil -- no-one really noticed until she could actually control her color shifting, and become invisible at the flip of a switch.

She herself didn’t know much about it, but apparently the scientists had activated a dormant gene and connected to hardware implanted in her legs, derived from the military invisibility function on robots. However, it was still slightly different; it was like invisibility, and more like disappearing into the shadows: fading to black.

Zeillese thought, afterwards, her child self had a reason to be afraid.

It was strange, to suddenly be honored and respected, for merely the magic of your veins, and a simple change with technology.

~*~

She looked through the eyes of someone made of all metal.

They fiddled with the buttons on the dashboard, came up with an overview of empty space, for thousands of miles in this quadrant of the galaxy.

A Riwohr ship phased through the haze of the stars, flexible and alive and the same as the space around it, like all were. Burning spheres of pure energy appeared at its jaws and blasted forth.

Those biological eyes set into metal widened, slammed on controls frantically, and died in a brilliant flash of light.

The space was empty, with one ship, once again.

~*~

Zeillese woke with her strange stone in hand again.

All she knew of that stone is that it was the only thing with her when she awoke.

~*~

Zeillese upgraded from office and teaching jobs to 24/7 scouting work.

It’s two days after that second strange dream, and Zeillese is on a planet some thousand light-years away from CAPS headquarters. She wears a simple black raincoat, for all she hates that kind of wear, it covers her more impressive traits. But at least under the hood, she looks more like a simple kalon.

She scowls.

But there’s no time for that, because Zeillese can feel a worried undercurrent to the air. She hears, in fragments, “Destroyed… outpost ship… caps.” Zeillese knew that if there had been anything left in remnants, or any sort of alert, the headquarters should know a ship was taken out.

But what if it was destroyed in a second?

Riwohrs had that sort of power. Zeillese faded into the shadows, and hurried her way off the planet.

What if that dream was more than a dream?

[cocoa]

Year 417

There isn’t much Zeillese knows that isn’t possible. There is something about living in a world of aliens and cyborgs, Riwohrs and CAPS that frays any concept of reality; the kind where whether through science or some ridiculous, universe-bending magic, time and space can be changed like a canvas for those with the power of destiny on their side.

Zeillese wondered, and motivated by such a curiosity, visited an old scientist friend of hers.

~*~

Year 67

Mr. Burrison was the kind of teacher that was kind without needing to be asked for it. Unlike some, he never looked twice at Zeillese’s flickering pelt. He merely smiled at her small, toothy grin and wide orange eyes.

Zeillese loved that he never felt the need to look past her smile. “Can ywou tell me wha aether is?” She flicked out her green tongue, the tip glowing blue. Mr. Burrison tapped her green nose.

“You should know! It runs a lot of cyborg’s limbs as one of the most efficient energy sources, lasting both a long time and being packed full of energy.”

Zeillese growled a bit at that. “No! No, I dun mean that. Ya’no… why do we even need it? People eat and run just fine! Why can’t we just eat. I like eating. I’m sure you wanna know, I like all the green and orange food because the nannies say it’s good for you and especially good for me ‘cos those are my colors.”

“So you like your carrots and broccoli!”

“Yeah! But don’t tell no-one, I like adding cheese. Remember! No telling.”

“Of course. No telling,” he said, in an appeasing tone. Zeillese squinted up at him, her bright green plastic limbs shuffling as she thought. Her eyes suddenly lit up.

“You owe me an answer! Aether! Mr.!” Zeillese insisted.

Mr. Burrison smiled once again. “Well. Since you’re such a smart girl, I’ll tell you. Aether -- well, machines can’t run on the energy of food the same way organic bodies can. Aether forms as that kind of food for the machine, and lasts a lot longer. You only have to refill your engine’s limbs every decade or more, and more advanced cyborgs can go for fifty years or more without needing extra. It’s a rare resource, but we have nearly limitless supplies for our population.”

Zeillese nodded, “Ok, what if you ran out of aether?”

“We wouldn’t.”

“You can’t say that.” And Mr. Burrison smiled a good smile, the kind that meant you’re right and he was testing you.

“You’re right. If a biological lifeform runs out of food, it stops working. It’s the same for those who run on aether. At this point, a lot of cyborgs have modified themselves so much that if they don’t have aether, they die.” His smile turned sad, then. “To be honest, a temporary lack of aether is a lot less worrisome than a lack of food. I believe the current aether security as of now is quite low. It takes as long to synthesize aether from the ground as it does for it run out from our veins.”

Zeillese stuck her tongue out. “Politics?”

Mr. Burrison shook his head. “You’re still a kid, aren’t you? Politics are important. I think we should put more money into higher security for our aether, not new shielding technology.”

~*~

Zeillese knocked on Mr. Burrison’s door. She had not been here for nearly a hundred years. She was trepidatious, almost afraid he would no longer be the same. Like her. She didn’t want him to change, the same way she had; change hurts from the inside. The peeling away of childhood to find nothing but dried up dreams, and the brutal leading force towards some other being that doesn’t feel like her, not anymore.

The door opens, to the same flecked gray beard, warm amber eyes and peg for a leg. Zeillese learned a century ago that all of his cybernetics was in his chest; it was what kept him alive. He smiled - and thank god, his smile was the same, like coming home to a place she forgot after so long. “Little Zeil,” he said, warmly. “Worried you’ve forgotten me, beyond the Veil.” He smirked vaguely at his own joke.

Zeillese’s lips quirked up of their own volition. “I could never forget you.” And it was true. Some people were too great in their small ways to be forgotten.

“Glad to hear it. Now, I really wish you were here just to see me - but I know you. You always came to me because you wanted to learn.” Zeillese nodded, slowly, not quite sure what she was assenting to. “It’s alright. You’re not so little anymore, not much time to chat. Lots of work to be done in this war. What do you want to know?”

Zeillese took in a breath and set her eyes on her old teacher. These questions needed answers. “Dreams. Is there any such thing as prophetic dreams?”

Mr. Burrison blinked. “Well, of course, there are all sorts of legends and stories throughout history of such things. I’d think you’d kno-”

“No,” Zeillese interrupted, and promptly apologized. “I’m very sorry, old habits, I shouldn’t have interrupted you.” Being with Mr. Burrison made Zeillese feel like a child again; Zeillese scolded herself in her head. Not proper conduct.

“Of course, it’s alright. Go on.”

“Actual dreams, in real life. I think they might happen to me.”

Mr. Burrison’s brows took a steep dive. “Zeillese…” He didn’t say anything after that, only looked at her shifting pelt. Why was he looking at her like that? Like so many people before him? Her pulse picked up at the wrong sight, the thing she never thought would happen. What made him question her?

“I --” she broke off, not sure what to say. She felt ready to leave. She began to turn.

“Zeillese, stop. I don’t mean it like that. But prophetic dreams? Zeillese, oh, oh, I don’t think I should be telling you this, but, that is the Riwohr’s trump card. It’s why we’re so desperate to defeat them with technology. They can see into the future, indefinitely long… some say this war is helpless. Some say they’ve already won, because with the future in their hands, they have power over this universe. The universe. But Zeillese, if you too can see…”

Her eyes, wide open. The future, oh, the future -- they had lost, in that dream, hadn’t they?

“Then we might be able to win this war.”

[cocoa]

“We have inputted the new technology onto Trading Base 5,” reports a man from lips that aren’t hers, yet with eyes she sees out of. Again, she is staring at a monitor, but this time overlooking a familiar base. “A non-CAPS affiliated ship is approaching.”

And the moment the ship got too close to the trading base, a laser beam was fired, hitting the hull and setting the ship aflame. A heavy silence seemed to descend upon the man. “Malfunction, sir. Did -” the man seemed to momentarily chew on his lip. “Were the full safety procedures not carried out for this project?”

~*~

Year 144

There were men, cyborgs and kalons that stared at Zeillese strangely. Their looks were unsettling to her, but she knew, young and with her black titanium limbs only just put in, that most never said anything. CAPS pushed a tolerant mindset, for the rehabilitation and advancement of disabled people and acceptance for all. They offered free gender-changing surgeries to those that felt that they didn’t fit in as they were, and had a strong presence in criminal reform, helping those who had wronged to begin to make the right decisions. If Zeillese had ever asked, they would probably gladly attempt to remove her Riwohr genes; it was, after all, one thing to merely be born paralyzed, and another to hold the enemies’ genes in you. Genes that never before produced any kind of rebel from the species -- likely because both of being raised with a conservative mindset and the fact that biologically, physically, and even in an abstract sort of sense of “magically”, they were different from all the other races of the universe.

And yet, among the people of the CAPS, Zeillese knew there were many men who were worse than them. They had joined the organization only to manipulate the tools of war. They overlooked the foremost importance of the organization; their presence had shortened their name from the full, the Cyborg Affiliation for the Progression of Science and Rehabilitation and Growth of Disabled Individuals (CAPS-RDGI) to merely the first four letters. Some claim it doesn’t really matter, but Zeillese has always loved the good cyborgs had done, and always wanted to view that first rather than the ambiguous view of what science could entail.

Once, Zeillese had been quietly wandering the halls, with a simple missive of curiosity that came with her new security permit. Zeillese was always careful of her curiosity; she feared, at times, it would not end well, and had adapted to sneaking about. It was silly, and sort of childish, not something she would do today. But she was merely a young, newly minted military recruit, barely a teenager.

That day, she heard arguing. Strained syllables and sharp words, the kind that burn in the back of your head and are too loud, too viciously pronounced. It reminded her, in a striking moment, of her father, and the faint, screeching words she could still remember at the fragile age of six months, when he had realized her slow growth was because she was paralyzed.

“Leave her out for the test, see if she survives! Only a Riwohr that can live alone here can be any daughter of mine.” Survival of the fittest, her mother had growled angrily, bitterly.

All Zeillese remembers being told was that a kalon with the same green as her pelt had left her at a cyborg pickup, one for supplies and wounded individuals. She wonders if that had been her mother. She desperately wishes it was - the cyborgs had assumed that was so, but you could never be sure. She also knows she is likely dead; kalons don’t live as long as the prolonged lifespans of cyborgs or the infinite ones of aliens.

It fills her with both hope and sorrow at the same time. Perhaps she had never been “alone” per se. The caps caretakers were good enough. But the closest thing Zeillese had ever really viewed to a parent figure was Mr. Burrison, and sometimes, she, like any other child, wished for something more.

The yells still echoed in the hallway, and with that frenzied recollection of memory, she felt empowered to approach and to hear what was going on. There was hate, too, among that sorrow, towards her father. It would dwell there for a long time.

“B-52 --” that was a strange name; few chose to keep their base assigned cyborg number, “have you considered before the dangers of not thoroughly testing your technology? CAPS may not have set-in-stone regulations about it, but you can’t just rely on your supposed ‘knowledge’ that it’s going to work out fine! Saving money isn’t the biggest of our problems here.”

“Well, considering the difficulty of defeating the Riwohrs, I doubt anyone would want to put a cap on what we can’t and can do. You already have thorough safety regulations for everything else. Leave weapon technology to us.”

Zeillese had, at that age, never really thought anything about long and detailed fine print at the back of her textbooks regarding science, invention and military regulations. It seemed confusing to her as to why they wouldn’t have ‘safety regulations’ for all of their technology. Wasn't it important?

“I know what you’re developing,” the other voice threatened, “reactive weapons for shielding tech? Really? It sounds like a good idea in theory, but I doubt that would get past Riwohr ships.”

“You aren’t even trying to win this war,” B-52 accused, at last, and Zeillese snuck back down the hall, till the voices faded back down to the quiet of the halls at night. Her pelt spritzed with color in agitation, with the high voices churning like floodwaters in her head, and the confusing ‘politics’ messing with her mind.

“Whatever,” Zeillese muttered in her head. As a teenager, fear wasn’t quite as forefront as it had been as a child, but a lack of care was. That feeling would last a long time, perhaps because she couldn’t do anything better at the time. “I’ll just forget about it.”

~*~

Year 417

It was a universal tenet that what you say that you’ll forget, you end up remembering. Zeillese had a great collection of many a secret in her head that she chose to keep to herself, to keep quiet because politics were stupid, didn’t make any sense and wasn’t worth her time. But like all little secrets, they gnawed like immortal worms at the lining of her heart, and left regret in the pores of Zeillese’s skin, through all of her years of indifference.

Breaking out of those piles of regret and inaction was hard.

But it was possible. And Zeillese knew she had seen the future, and she knew what she had heard from the past, and she knew that if she didn’t do anything in some way, she would end up on this crumbling ship again, facing her father with a kind of resignation to death that Zeillese never wanted to have again.

It’s amazing, the kind of motivation a fear of premature death can bring you. Injustice, when it pounds directly like a hammer on Zeillese’s heart, or anyone’s, for that matter, has a way of spurring them into action. They were among Zeillese’s few core values: a great value to life, a hate for her father, and, underneath it all and layered under the banner of “life”, a love for those similar to herself, born imperfect, and striving towards better than their fate had written for them.

So, Zeillese writes a forged report, copying the handwriting of the files she had gone through for years as a basic worker, and slips it under the head coordinator’s doorstep. The report she wrote details the problems experienced from the shielding technology, such as sudden blasts of firepower when unidentified objects get near. It was a lie in this timeline, but all it would take was a test to prove her hidden point.

[cocoa]

Year 98

Zeillese looked up to the head scientists and commanders of CAPS with no small amount of wonder. These were the men that let Zeillese walk again. There was no other place in the world that could have done the same, that could have decided to so selflessly give their kindness towards helping people like her.

“In a few years, Rookie Zeil, you are going to be graduating to a military recruit. How does that feel?”

“Super-super cool!” she answered. Her childlike enthusiasm would take a few more years to get dulled; it is surprisingly how quickly we go from children to teenagers.

“Super, for sure,” the Head Coordinator replied. “You have just a few more years of education ahead of you, and then you can officially join the wondrous ranks of the CAPS. In honor of this upcoming achievement, we wanted to return something to you.”

“I can’t wait!” Zeillese said, totally overlooking the latter point of the Head Coordinator’s statement. He just smiled at Zeillese’s excitement.

“Not so fast, Rookie. But here. Take this; it was left by that lovely kalon woman that brought you to us. She told us to give this to you on the day of her death.”

Zeillese stared at that, wide-eyed at the mention of who she thought as her mother, however vaguely, however distantly. “W-what?” she said, shocked. The Head Coordinator just smiled and handed her a small black box.

She opened it, and was met with the simple sight of a black rock. “A rock?” she questioned, disappointed. There was no great discovery or revelation of her past as Zeillese had wished. Just some stupid rock.

“Yes, just a rock, according to our tests,” the man said with a frown.

Zeillese frowned too. When she left, she put it away in her bedside drawer without a thought.

~*~

Years 418 - 739

The future.

It was an amazing, powerful concept; divine in nature, and fated in deliverance. It was no wonder the Riwohrs saw themselves on the top of the world, when they knew the world’s future; knowledge, after all, is power.

Zeillese, herself, was an intuitive woman, the kind that wouldn’t just wonder at strange dreams, the kind that wouldn’t just take the explanation that suddenly she could see the future for granted. There had to be reason: Zeillese wasn’t pure Riwohr. Her color shifting was hardly a working function without the help of the cyborg’s technology. So surely, seeing so vividly into the future could not be taken so for granted.

She knew she never dreamed every night. She knew, whenever she dreamt, she remembered that rock. The rock that wasn’t quite a rock, but something magical, in meaning and perhaps in power - given to Zeillese by her mother - and maybe just with the power to give her these future dreams.

It was an answer Zeillese decided upon. The other consideration, of leaving such a powerful power to doubt, left her insides mingling with a fear and uncertainty too turbulent to leave unchecked.

But where had that rock come from? It clearly was not just a rock, and it was from her childhood. Zeillese had never heard of anything like it. But, perhaps, in the dark void of its color, the flexible shape, and the subtle glitter of galaxies, it reminded her of the Riwohrs themselves. Something eternal, something immortal.

Few people had seen the Riwohrs face-to-face in this war, even their home planet. This alien species, as a whole, was so elusive, it was as if they were part of the darkness of the world itself.

Zeillese stared at the rock and rolled it between her blue paw-pads rhythmically until she had fallen asleep.

~*~

Pulsing black, glittering purple, frivolous, writhing appendages, and gleaming beams of light for eyes. It was not a Riwohr; it was one of their ships. Their ships, their planets, and themselves as a species: they were all made from the same material.

This ship did not look like the other that had destroyed Trading Outpost 5. No: from these eyes of Zeillese’s most inborn, fearful kin, it looked like it was dying.

And die it did, in a outward exhale of breath - in a slow blink of beady black eyes - and in a flurry of orange sparks that in some way, to Zeillese, felt like just a beginning.

~*~

Zeillese opened her eyes, and looked down on her rock.

It had to be from her home planet.

On the other hand… Zeillese stood, conflicted for the moment. Absentmindedly smoothing her hair in the mirror, thinking through long, steady breaths, as long as her thousand-year life.

I have to do something, she thought, over and over. She pondered over the way she was quick to forge those documents so the cyborg militant’s shielding was inputted. That was different. The answer was clear. But this… It seemed like something impossible, something meant for a hero, to find an end to this war - to find out just why an alien ship disappeared without a shot its way.

Yet, the power to see into the future had opened up a million avenues in Zeillese’s eyes. When she would look left, she would see a co-worker, and wonder, If I out of the blue talked to them as friend, would I gain a friend? Zeillese didn’t talk to many; she stuck to the people she knew. For the past century, it felt almost like she had been alone in a sea of people. And then - if I talked to the Head Coordinator about the militant cyborgs, would that change anything? Too risky, she would normally think. But - if I took a turn off my daily surveillance route, or paperwork, I wonder who I would meet - I wonder if my legs would ache of tire, and my eyes fill with marvel or fear.

Of all the powers that Zeillese had ever thought of, the deviance from the fate our destiny seemed to have already carved out for us was the most powerful. Being able to fade into the dark, see into the future? Bah! It was worth nothing, nothing at all - no, not next to that otherworldly nature, that otherworldly action, undeniable action, the kind that had turned nations to their knees, the kind that had turned the tide of a harsh, verbal battle, the kind that had changed hearts and made joyful, mournful, and angry tears fall.

But let’s be real, Zeillese acknowledged, it isn’t that easy. And it isn’t. But then, I’m a near superhero, with dark ninja’ing and future seer ga’kalore on my side.

[cocoa]

It was delightfully simple, with the kind of thrill Zeillese had never experienced before, not as a child, nor a young adult.

Zeillese worked as the Veil, and traveled the universe in shadows.

She dreamt of the future.

She anonymously tipped either for the cyborgs, to win against the aliens, or against; to win against the flaws of themselves.

She searched, relentlessly; in the time between guard shifts on the archives, the current records and in cyborg militant’s offices at the HQ or outposts thousands of miles away.

She learned, she remembered, she theorized, she saved, and Zeillese became confused.

Zeillese had not forgotten the threatening words of her father on the once-future day of her death (she believed, by now, she had hopefully averted her own death). She thought it was perhaps the environmentally damaging effects that had destroyed the alien ship.

But it wasn’t; it couldn’t have been. The emissions of the cyborg technology, as much as their resource harvesting might have damaged some of their host planets, could not have affected the universe so greatly from so far away. The CAPS were not so grand.

~*~

Year 739

Zeillese returns to CAPS HQ for the first time in five months.

“Is that the Veil?” she hears, in murmured whispers from across the hall.

“Who? That’s her? She looks a lot like Zeillese…”

“Zeillese is the Veil, you idiot.” Zeillese turns her head and sees the person who had just spoken: the same recruit she had trained some three hundred years ago, who used to have a turquoise child limb. He was noticeably more cyborg now.

But the other….

Year 76

“Zeillese?” The whisper came eagerly, clearly altered through a voice changer, jagged and mechanical.

“Who’s asking?” Tough and small to other kids, and admiration for those older than her. But always a bit a fear, for both.

“Just Sixty-Seventy-Two!” Immediately, Zeillese scoffed and turned around, pivoting on her plastic back legs to come to them face-to-face. Zeillese plucked the voice changer device right off their face, revealing a furry gray face with bright blue eyes. “Hey,” they whispered with a toothy grin in response. Their real voice was much softer like this.

“Numbers don’t work like that, y’know!”

“Yeah…”

“It’s read as six hundred seventy two, Seven.” Zeillese was careful to pronounce each syllable, as if she was reading from an invisible number that was hard to crack. Seven smiled in response.

“I thought I was Six yesterday, Zeil!”

“And I thought I told you to call me Zeillese, Six!” Seven mock-gasped in horror.

“Six? What happened to Seven…”

Zeillese flat-lined at that point, throwing up her arms and yelling, “Seven! Seven. Just Seven, since you can’t pick a real name for yourself.”

Seven threw up their arms in reassurance. “Okay, okay, Zeil, it’s Seven --”

“It is Zeil - ese - se!” Seven shuffled nervously for a few moments. Zeillese frowned, and nudged Seven’s shoulder with hers. “Wanna go play a game?”

Seven’s eyes lit up, any worries dispersed by that statement. “Okay! Let’s go! I bet I’ll beat you.”

“Nope!” Zeillese shouted, running down the halls after her wolfish friend.

… was Seven, whom Zeillese knew from her childhood. She cringed at the thought of how loud and brash she had been back then. She’d yell and never even realize she was scaring her friend. Though, in a way, she was evolving back towards that. Had evolved back towards that, in a different way.

“Zeillese?” Seven called, hesitantly. She had always been so much more nervous than her as a child, and yet, had probably turned out braver during her teenage years. To hear her name on Seven’s lips like that was almost as if she had been whisked back to her childhood. She was so old, now, though, in kalon years - perhaps her fifties, or sixties. The lines of age became so blurred under cyborg technology.

Zeillese knew she could have turned and reunited with her first best friend, of centuries prior.

But she chose to merely nod and keep walking. She had a mission to fulfill that couldn’t wait.

Perhaps, throughout the ages, she had also grown cold.

[cocoa]

She looks through no eyes this time. She is a ghost. There is a powerful feeling to this future; like the universe pulled her more strongly than ever before to this moment.

Zeillese recognized this base. She had never been here, but in the black documents of the cyborg underbelly, it was perhaps one of the most critical bases, because it stored the aether. And shadowy figures - Riwohrs - were floating inside like ghosts. She followed them.

These ancestors of hers destroyed the supplies, quickly and efficiently. Some kind of poison that ate away at the source of the aether itself, leaving the mountains and mountains of tubes of aether dry and empty within minutes.

The air itself seemed to shake and shiver, and one of the Riwohrs turned and looked, seemingly, straight at her.

Unlike the rest, its eyes were a beady orange.

The image broke. Zeillese returned.

~*~

Zeillese rushed down the corridors of the CAPS HQ. There was no time for the Veil here. Mr. Burrison was right. The security for aether wasn’t sufficient at all.

Knocking urgently at the Head Coordinator’s door, Zeillese rolls her shoulders in preparation for the words that she didn’t know how to say. The door opened.

“Veil?” the man asked, regarding her under her military name.

“Head Coordinator,” she replied, waiting for him to invite her into his office. He nodded and led her to a seat. “Permission to speak granted?”

“Of course,” he replied, smiling in regard to her manners.

“Thank you. I have a urgent report to make-” luckily, Zeillese had come up with a quick lie for him “-I have been given reports from anonymous sources that the Riwohr plan to break into Critical Storage Base One to neutralize our supplies of aether.”

“That is very worrying. And what do you suggest?”

“I suggest that the best course of action would be divert extra security and technology to the base in favor of our current military push forward. To strengthen defense.”

The Head Coordinator frowned at her. “That is asking a lot. Are you aware that such a suggested course of action would mean that the Riwohrs could very well punch through our front-line defenses straight to our outpost bases, in that case? Like that instance at Trading Post Five?”

Zeillese hesitated. “Yes.” The man narrowed his eyes, then.

“Then why do you suggest this? And what proof is there of your claims? For all we know, the Riwohr could have planted that source to get us to do just this. Or maybe… you are working with them?”

Zeillese gaped at him. “Working with them? Ho-”

“I’m sorry for the accusation, but we all know it’s a possibility, as your father was a Riwohr. We have given you the benefit of the doubt. But you have been very cold as of late, to other cyborgs and in your work. We worry that you might be straying.”

At this, Zeillese ground her teeth and set her glare, hard, on the Head Coordinator. “I’ve been working hard towards defeating those aliens, not helping them. How dare you suggest that? I hate my father! I bare this military crest on me everywhere I go; I can walk thanks to you. Do you not think I have been grateful - helping you for the past seven hundred years?”

“Aah… Well -”

“You interrupt me, I’ll interrupt you,” Zeillese interjected, harshly. She was vicious now; an angry beast at this subtle discrimination she had endured for years. For a moment, she calmed; smoothing her expression, and the frizzed strands of her hair. “Equal exchange,” she muttered, remembering a man.

~*~

Year 533



Zeillese was at a bar. It had been a long day, and her hood was down, for the moment.

A kalon with rainbow hair, mussed, and fur plain, gray and utilitarian, settled into the seat next to her. “What’s your story?” he asked. She looked at him from the corner of her eye, blue whiskers hanging low, brushing against the table.

Zeillese sighed. “At least ask my name, first. Manners.”

“Oh, well then,” he said, incredulously, as if no-one could care for manners out here. “My name is Prism. And yours, ma’am?” His voice was exaggerating, mocking; in no way polite. Zeillese breathed out steadily, irritated at the man.

“My name is Zeillese.” Prism grimaced delightfully at her.

“I would think you’d be insulted. Not going to berate me, hmm? Where are you from?”

She shot him a look. “CAPS HQ.”

“Wow. Amazing. Talk about fancy and scientific, you must be one chick! I’m from some planet. You wouldn’t know about it anymore. But it was colorful - the most colorful planet in the universe.”

Zeillese didn’t reply, just cleaned her nails.

“I’ve met a lot of people out here, ever since my home planet was destroyed. If it wasn’t for your ears, I wouldn’t say you were a CAPS member. In fact, I’d say you’re a bit more like me than them. Hopeless, maybe. Lost, too.” Zeillese gave Prism a barely veiled harsh look at that. It was such an insulting thing to say. “I’m a whole lot younger than you, but I feel like your long life has left you a bit stagnant in the emotional aspect. Maybe I just met you! But look at you. Taking my insults to your - what - century old name like you don’t care. You do care, don’t you? You should retaliate. You should also -”

“Shut up,” Zeillese muttered, a kind of word she hadn’t said for years. Not since she was a child.

Prism smiled, wide and fake. “There we go. Equal exchange.” He paused, as if he didn’t know where to go from there. “Live a little, maybe. But I know that won’t be as easy to get out of you. For people as old as you, change takes eons. But you have freedom, and that’s pretty beautiful.”

“What do you know of beauty, anyway?” Zeillese paused, hesitant to say her next words. She felt like she was going backwards. But Prism’s words echoed in her head, and she was annoyed that he called her ‘old’. So rude. “You seem to be quite a scoundrel.”

“Scoundrel? Have you not heard of Planet Variegation? Its real name was lost, but…”

“Variegation…? Of course. It was supposed to truly be beautiful, but an errant colonizing race destroyed their planet.”

“It’s my home. Tell me now I know nothing of beauty.”

Zeillese looked down at her nails again. “Riwohrs,” she muttered, as if to herself. Louder. “I wonder how it feels.”

Prism looked confused. “What?”

“How it feels to have your birth planet destroyed. Gone. Forever.”

Prism’s voice went quiet at that. “It feels terrible.” A long pause, and yellow, probing eyes. “I hope no one ever has to go through it.”

“No one?”

“No one. Not even those who never lived there, because there is always that thought at the back of everyone’s mind. This was where I was born. There is where my family is from. Maybe I love or hate them, or they love or hate me. It’s still where you began. And nothing can change that.”

“I see…” Zeillese said, into the dark silence, in the middle of the vibrant bar.

~*~

“Well?” The Head Coordinator questioned.

“I want -” she broke off, “No, I need you to do something. Anything. Extra security for the aether base. Don’t ever leave it unguarded. You have to trust me. I care for these people here. Is - Is this not emotion, is this not care I am showing, in these moments?” Zeillese said those last words loud, saturated with feeling.

The Head Coordinator looked right back into her eyes, burning a vibrant orange fire. Regret seemed to spark in his own plain, brown eyes. “I… I will heed your warning. But there is only so much attention I can give.”

“Whatever,” Zeillese says, finally remembering that perhaps she should be kind, “Thank you. I’ll go now.”

Zeillese excused herself, and closed the door, with just the slight bearings of a slam.

[cocoa]

She contributed her own help to the extra defense for the next many years to ensure the aether supplies were not tampered with. Mr. Burrison helped by lobbying some members of the CAPS board; he had always believed the aether should be protected more thoroughly with the dangers that would come if the supply was destroyed.

On the other hand, Zeillese wanted to end this war. It was nearing eight hundred years long -- all her life, ever since she had been born in year 37, she had been subject to the propaganda, the work, the fear and the constant, looming presence of something beyond comprehension.

She knew she was missing something. Something big, something bigger than her, something bigger than everything she had ever known.

You had to wonder -- Riwohrs had existed since what seemed to be the beginnings of time. With time being so long and stretching so infinitely, that was a big thing to say. Their population was huge, twenty billion, perhaps even more, especially considering they never died, unless by weapons. They phase through space, walls and become invisible, and even see the future. The planets and ships they lived on were all one and the same with them. The entirety of their species was linked together into one great thread: Zeillese, a stuttering anomaly among everything else. She often thought that the Riwohrs were closer to the universe than any other living thing that had ever existed. They were linked to both space and time, and even the fabric of their skins looked like the universe itself.

There was something more that Zeillese had picked up on in the last hundred years or so. Distress. Snippets of the future of Riwohrs, strangled with an all-encompassing fear, and so many more emotions. Defiance. Anger. Sorrow. Denial. A chant. Impossible, impossible! It could never happen to us. Zeillese had never felt emotions in her dreams before. But those - those snippets, like a flash in the netherworld, was like dipping her foot into hot lava minds.

She would first suppose this is some kind of victory for the cyborgs, for CAPS - finally. But for all she wishes that was it, Zeillese also knows it can’t be. It isn’t right. She remembers that earlier future dream, of that ship being destroyed by itself. She wonders.

Zeillese has the stupidest idea. More stupid than any idea she ever had as a child. But she knows, unlike her father, she won’t live forever: this has to end now. And she knows, in the reflection of her soul, in Prism’s words, in her past and Mr. Burrison and Seven and a million other people, that she has a duty she must resolve, must fulfill.

It is the conflict of her past. So Zeillese decides to go the heart of it.

~*~

Year 823

To wander to the ends of the universe, to the heart of the beast, is a difficult task.

For all of the stupid ideas in her life, Zeillese, at least, did not run in head first. Her route was carefully planned, making a map from snippets of the universe in her dreams, from her own travels and the resources available at CAPS HQ.

She requested backup, too. A assault on the Riwohr front. They needed to be shocked; the Head Coordinator and every other cap agreed easily enough to her tip. And Zeillese would need to touch their minds, somehow; each and every Riwohr mind.

Zeillese hopes she had gained enough trust from her peers for her to lead this assault. For years, with her subtle meddling, they had pushed back against the Riwohr fleets. It has to be enough. After all, for all of their sense of mysticism, Riwohrs could be killed, destroyed even, the same as anything else.

~*~

It’s been days.

War is simple. Now, at the front lines again after so long, it makes all of her inner pondering like a waste time. She knows it wasn’t; but the fact remains.

One, small, invisible ship, with one, small, green invisible occupant. Funny thing, invisible technology on ships doesn't’ work if there is something living inside -- it just looks like they’re floating. It’s good for her, because no-one expects someone to hijack the Riwohr main ship.

It doesn’t take long, and then she’s on board, through some mangling through strange, jaw-like hangers, and slipping through doors that barely seem to exist. The ship seems to be trembling, from the way the paws of her feet feel like they’re vibrating, occasionally sending her stumbling. She knows this certain ship is not sustaining any blasts. No; it has to do with that feeling of fear from the Riwohrs.

Zeillese looks left and right through the dark, black caverns of this beast of a ship. The walls are rough, knotted; nothing like the steel utilitarian aspect of any other ship she knows. They glitter with millions of subtle, starry colors; purple, orange, and green. It is, to Zeillese’s distaste, somewhat beautiful, in the same way she would at times call herself beautiful. It is, also, identical to the substance of her ‘rock’.

But that doesn’t matter right now. The fact that she knows she is going to get caught very, very soon is critical.

Zeillese turns a corner. And get caught she does, because by some kind of gravity, the universe had pulled her to her father, as if they were two opposite magnets: always destined to meet. Zeillese hadn’t forgotten her first dream, either, not a second, over these long, harrowing centuries.

There is a strong difference here, though. The fear. The unfamiliar fear in her father’s face, gaunt and drained of that black color, of those galaxies that were supposed to glitter. And Zeillese stands, strong and with the power of fury and grace at her side, an avenger older than centuries.

Her father speaks first. She remembers those screeching tones; oh, how she could ever forget!

“Zeillese! How are you even -” his face, suddenly, contorts, into something more devilish than ever on his alien face. “You have something, don’t you?” Zeillese’s eyes pop; it must have been a mistake to bring her ‘rock’. For a moment, she thought of pulling it out of her pocket -- but why should she be showing anything to him?

“Maybe I do. But that doesn’t matter to you now,” she threatened.

“You view yourself in a higher place than you really are, Zeillese…” His tone went from the screeching tone of all Riwohrs to a deep roar like a dragon. Anger. It would be more frightening if it wasn’t for the clear agitation of his eyes.

She took a step forward. “More than ever, I would say the same of you.” And then, as if struck by the most deafening blow, he stumbled back, mouth gaping and eyes blown wide. He looked more human than he ever had before. He seemed then to come back, vehement and bursting with fire, face twisted once again. Denial.

“How do you know that? How have you even gotten this far? This isn’t the future laid out for us. It can’t possibly be -” he broke off, staring at the contorting floor. Defiance. Fear.

Zeillese didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was best to roll with it. “I am half Riwohr, am I not? I feel it too.” She promptly looked down at her feet, mirroring his emotion.

Something broke in the air. “You are a bad actor, Zeillese.” She looked up, and saw his distraught eyes. It was as if he was facing death itself, like the world had been ripped away from him; or maybe, like a child who had been taken away from their childhood years too early. Sorrow. “I know you can’t feel it, even if you can… see the future, perhaps. It’s the only way you could have stopped us.”

“Feel what?” Zeillese demanded. And her father cried out, as if praying to some god that had abandoned him.

“Feel the end of our lives! Twenty three billion, one hundred and twenty three million, four hundred and seventy two thousand, and seven hundred and thirty-one,” he listed, “I can feel it. We all have, every last one of us - those as old as the universe, those as young as this year - the end of all our lives, for the past thousand years! You CAPS are fools. You don’t know what war you’ve been fighting all this time. Y-you…” his screeching died, shuttered, whispered, “y-you don’t know, you’ve been fighting against the dying of a race. For the universe…. Our greatest entity, which we have gone against. You have to understand! When your god tells you your time is up… would you accept your death?”

“Yes!” Zeillese spat. Hysteria. Utter hysteria was what her father was reduced to. “If I was you -- if I was so horrible a father to have left his own child on a desolate planet for death, I would welcome it! It would be what I would deserve. It was what you deserve, it is what -” [/i]your whole race deserves,[/i] and she cuts herself off, because for all she hates her father, she remembers herself. A whole race cannot be so bad, and in that trembling moment, suspended away from the currents of time, she too feels sorrow.

Her father bows his dark, dark head. “It had already begun, then,” he whispers, “more than ever I was fixed on the Riwohrs as a race, towards surviving. You didn’t fit. You didn’t belong to stay. But now…” He breathes in, slow. “It looks like you will be the only remnant of the Riwohr species left at all.”

“What- what exactly…?”

“Everything. We will all just disappear. This ship. This planet. I feel it coming. I feel it coming…” Then, clarity, and he locks his wild eyes with hers. “I hope you can forgive me.”

Zeillese’s mouth twists. “Never. You can’t be forgiven, you can only beg for forgiveness and the bigheaded view of your people,” she says, harshly. “But perhaps I can give your-” maybe just our, a little bit too, “-race penance.”

Her father merely laid on the ground, and touched his nose to floor, seeming to melt into the ship. Faintly, he nodded, and locked eyes one last time before they closed. Go, his voice seemed to whisper, in the most human tone Zeillese had ever thought to hear from a Riwohr, I cannot ask for your forgiveness. Only for this. Only for this.

Zeillese ran.

~*~

Zeillese gets back on her ship, and flies, and flies, and flies, til she reaches the surface of the Riwohr home planet. It is almost as if not just her father had spoken, but the entirety of the race. Perhaps there were some wonders of the Riwohr race she did not know yet, would never know.

Stepping down onto the planet for the first time in what is nearly a millennia, Zeillese is guided, perhaps, by those unknown forces of the Riwohrs. But to carry out the end burns like fate in her blood, guiding her limbs, both real and fake, to a empty space in the ground. The ‘rock’. It fits perfectly.

Perhaps a millennia ago, her mother took this piece of her home so she’d always have it with her. Or perhaps she took it so she would stand here on this day, and not die alone on a steel ship, at the feet of her own father.

The air trembles with sorrow, thick like cloying mud with each step Zeillese takes, with each inch of her hand towards her pocket. Taking in a deep breath, she kneels by the indentation, and holds the rock out of in front of her. It feels like standing at the center of the beginning and end of a world, of a legacy greater than any other. It is exactly that, Zeillese knows with grim certainty.

Zeillese remembers. She does not forget. She wonders if that man, Prism, had not been right. If to lose your home planet forever was not as bad as he made it out to be.

Because that’s what was about to happen to her, but far more. And Zeillese found, she wasn’t so afraid. It was more of a state of calm. She, after all, was eight hundred years older than Prism. The endless of years stretched emotion, thought, and life have brought her to this moment of peace among whimpering despair. I am not afraid. But I will mourn you, even while the rest of the world celebrates.

“I will mourn you,” she whispers, because she knows the Riwohrs will be the devils in their history. “I will mourn you,” she repeats, feeling all of the minds around her whisper acknowledgement, reassurance, bitterness and resignation. She placed the piece of herself into the crevice, turned, and ran, skidding into her ship the moment the world came to a shuddering stop.

The moment the emotion slid off like water, the resounding defeat, the lost hope and crying souls slipping away into some great void. And this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Zeillese had once read that in a Earthen anthology by some man called T.S. Elliot.

She turns. The planets, the ships: all gone, and in their place, a mere shower of fiery orange stardust, the same color as Zeillese’s blood, and no one else's.

She stands among the quiet of the universe, for that moment, in the quiet, hovering ship in a newfound realm of nothing. She bows her head. Silence.

So this is how it ends.

This impossible thousand years.

[cocoa]

for the edit stamp

edit 11/15:
one of the art pieces' link expired, & i dunno if it'll still b counted but this is the piece:
from part 7, prism & zeillese scene, here