And then, the star died.
It had been a long time coming and
it knew it, but when the end came, it was still a shock. All those hundreds of millennia
gone, in a moment of blinding glory. Its neighbors were obliterated as were the
bright creatures upon them. The star was heartbroken, for they had shown such
promise. It lamented its helplessness to stop their erasure.
And then the star thought. IT
thought; how could it do that if it was dead? (Let alone that it is a star.) Across
eons of our time (but mere moments to the star) it was still existing, but also
changing.
When a star dies it has a unique
opportunity before it. It ceases to be what it was; it is no longer a warm,
life giving thing. But, it doesn’t cease being. The potential paths before it
are myriad and astonishing.
Its remainder of gases and metals
could be far flung and reused in another star or even, in the making of biological
life. Its core could be left, after much
compression, as a super dense neutron star - a star that revolves rapidly and
screams furiously at the night. Or even it could become the most mysterious of
interstellar objects, a black hole - a seeming tear in space and time that
forever draws anything caught in its gravity well towards its gaping maw.
So how had our star continued its
cognizance? How was it reborn?
The former light giver had become a
nebula: a birthing ground for stars. Formed from its remnants, this colorful stellar
womb held within its wispy tendrils the seeds for new astral lights. The star
had become a parent for a new generation of cosmic luminaries.
Our star was happy again, for each
of these new stars held the potential for their own neighbors. For intelligent creatures
with promise. And eventually, something else entirely.
