Skip to main content

Astronimek

 Astronimek. In our ancient history, those who studied the stars and their profound motions were scholar-priests, reinforcing the binding supplication we had to the night skies. When Titr overtook Hruesk, it was time to push north in pursuit of Those Who Thunder, and when Viviq aligned against the other Six Sisters, we prayed with battle dances in hope that the sky would once again be lit. Even since the first hatching, we have been tied to what lies beyond. 


I bear the title Astronimek now. The rites, songs, and measures all live within me across uncountable hatchlings. Standing on the Starmantle, I feel this weight as an undeniable vastness. Vast as the eternity beyond. 



Skyward. Ships crowd and throw long shadows across ancient desert, some so massive that I can sense a subtle pulling exertion. The ceremony has drawn many from far and wide. My scales and feathers quiver in excitement, exultance. I have stood here so many times before but the feeling does not diminish. It grows. Hot air awash in elated voices flows over me, mixes with incoming pheromone communications in droves and I shiver, toothy muzzle wide, feeling lurid-vertigo pinpricks down my spine. 


A new communique flashes, brings exciting sweetness. It holds one word, one that travels amongst the crowd like a great tide. 


Completion.


I am an Astronimek. I bear undying legacies from ages past, when my kind were supplicants and slaves to the motions of the stars. Within me lives those memories. 


But now, lit from behind by the birth of a new star forged not by random nature, but by own our whim in a miraculous dawn, we are slaves nor supplicants no longer. And this is the birth of that future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vanguard of the Nest

 The vast, cold intelligence maintaining the Vanguard took little mind to the unfortunate silence from Home. Even as decades and centuries turned to ceaseless, unresponsive millennia which in turn became yawning eons comprised of tens of millions of years— Vanguard continued its directives.  Mine the Stone. Birth the Legions. Keep watch. Remain silent. And so Vanguard did. Unquestioning. It’s colossal complex sprawled further down and within Lunar stone as an onslaught of harvesting machines many kilometers in size churned, chewed, cleared, and printed their way through monolithic regolith. Vanguard observed their progress where each slow, persistent mechanical moment drifted into centuries, work-schedules across millennia. Complexes the size of small continents were completed tidily, efficiently, all tethered and slaved to Vanguards super-matter heart.  The Legion, too, grew, a diligent army of genetic splicing technology unfurling and reorienting the Peoples traits. Dig...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tall Grass

 Evan sat in the car and looked out into the tall grass.  The dinosaurs were out there . Up and out over the prairie was a vision of ragnarok, all tall clouds black and bruised purple painted by pinkish sunlight as dusk became night. Shadows grew long in the grass and Evan strained looking into it all, eager for a sighting. Even without seeing a thing for nearly thirty minutes— the thrill was there, he could feel it, ancient mammalian fear mixing with modern excitement.  The dinosaurs were out there! Motion, and Evan as well as his fellows in the car instantly turned, making the Jeep rock slightly. It was one of the guides, a tall and lethe woman with dark skin— she was standing. Gazing out to the left off into swaying, pink-tinted grass. Everyone seemed to hold their breath.  She whistled then— or something like a whistle came out— long and thin sounding and oddly metallic. It echoed out into oncoming twilight.  Silence.  The guide looked back at everyone ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bobby and the Big Time Swing

 The angry, unfamiliar star gets closer every day. It throws mean light over Cretaceia. Makes the gem-green jewel of Jurassica look sickly under nasty light, blanches the red deserts and crimson badlands around Triassican searing white. Ferns lilt. Fliers chirp ugly possibilities on the wing and it all rains down like so many bad premonitions.  But Bobby ain’t scared.  Bobby is big as a mountain, old as the sea. His people are the backs of the sky and the muscles of this mighty Earth, each one a nation containing multitudes. Starlight seeps down Brachiosaurus scales to drench the world in constellation light. His steps beckon cartographers as each one reforms valleys, reshapes the deltas. The unwelcome star threatens all that. Bad dreams beckoning fire and ash.  But Bobby ain’t scared.  The big-brains on two little feet tell him the Plan. Simple as can be, simple as gentle breezes and succulent plains of ferns for munching, simple as all things natural and corre...
Post a Comment
Read more