His memories are crashing down on him. He’s seeing the past, present and twenty years in the future.
Twenty years of darkness. He tries to pull his mind back to the present. As the cold hard ground quickly approaches.
He remembers the curiosity of being able to do what no regular man could.
But then he remembers the past. A point when he truly felt safe, without worry, without fear.
His death.
He was a sleep with the stars, the universe, until something pulled him back.
Thora is only a few stories from the ground. His hand encompasses hers. She smiles a sign of relief, happiness.
Jahum pulled him from the sleep he wanted, from his equilibrium. He can feel the eternal sleep pulling him back, his power gone, he can barely grasp Thora’s hand.
He’s tired.
Of everything.
Cole closes his eyes as this world leaves him too weak to open them. His form near impossible to see. He needs to sleep, forever, death.
The only reason he’s here is because Jahum created a reason. The reason was Thora.
Thora.
Maybe…
If…
As he fades from the world so does his thoughts.
Maybe…if she dies…
I can finally rest again…Sleep forever…
Then I won’t…be…alone…anymore…
With the last of his energy, he opens his eyes and looks into hers.
Sorry…Thora…
He pulls back his hand from her grasp. She opens her mouth to yell as she hits the ground.
The bottom of the Skyeater cracks open. Chunks of the red crystal sky rain down over the Atlantic Ocean.
Thora falls from the cracks, still alive. She still reaches up for the thing that’s not there.
Cole.
Past the cracks, Leif hovers under the Skyeater’s star, the crack is gone, but above it the Earth’s sky shows its beautiful baby blue hue.
Leif grins in disgust as the star falls and engulfs him.
The Starkiller zooms under Thora and she disappears in a flash. It speeds off as the Skyeater continues to rain down. Leif’s star ascends into the sky and grows smaller and smaller until it disappears into nothing.
Leaving behind the remains of the people who once worshiped him.
Deconstruction – You’re Never Alone
“Do you believe we’re alone in the universe?” Thora asks. Cole, Thora and Julio lie on the sand on the beach in upscale clothes on a giant flowery blanket. They just came from an event and decided to stop by the beach.
It’s night time, the secluded beach shows off the stars, the galaxies, and the odysseys, unhampered by the city, pollution, and humanity as a whole.
It looks so clear it’s like there wasn’t a sky at all, only the stars. They all gaze into it.
“There are millions of galaxies out there. It’s hard to believe we’re alone when we’re not even a stone splashing into a vast ocean,” Julio says.
“Well do you believe in a god?” Thora asks.
Julio sighs, he doesn’t answer.
“We are all made out of star dust, stars that were full of life and died billions of years ago,” Cole replies.
He lifts his hand out in the air. He stares at it against the backdrop of the stars. He examines every intricate line and detail, the complexities of Human DNA.
“Seeing how we are right here right now must mean something, right?”
Cole puts his hand down and stares at the stars. He doesn’t care if nobody answers him. He just wants to gaze into the stars forever.
22 – In A Universe Without Stars
A Cliffside looks out into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s two weeks after the attack. Giant crystal spires poke out of the blood red ocean.
The Skyeater’s wreckage. Crystal chunks extend past the horizon. On the cliff there are nine small metal crosses in the ground. Thora sits in front of them with a string around her neck, the Starkiller only a mile behind her. She rubs her left hand, the one she should’ve lost.
Wilker and Noata walk up behind her. Noata carries another cross and a hammer. He sees her rubbing her hand.
“How’s the hand?” He asks. Thora clenches it.
“It’s fine, I’m still getting used to it.”
With the Astrons and Eliite technology they can do almost anything.
“Good, if it feels bad tell me, I need practice,” Noata says as he walks next to the crosses.
As he hammers in the last cross, Thora peers past him into a blood red ocean. “All sea life. Gone,” she mutters in a mono tone.
“Not all…Most,” Wilker replies. Noata finishes and steps back.
“Done.”
There is a name on each of the crosses. Thora’s mom and dad, Lane, Lance and Serena, Julio, Erin, Neil and Arnold and finally Cole.
On each cross hangs an artifact symbolizing them, if they have nothing physical symbolizing them, then there is an object carved out of metal to symbolize them.
Thora takes off her ring and puts it on a string. It’s not the same ring, but Noata was able to create another almost completely similar one to her specification.
She stands up and walks over to Cole’s cross, she puts her ring around it.
“Goodbye, Cole.”
“I can’t believe you still believe in this after all that happened,” Wilker says.
“Somebody has to,” she replies.
Noata tried to make one for his late wife but was met with protest.
“When are you going to wake up the others?” Noata asks.
“It’ll be a few days before the ship is done terraforming to our expectations. The only reason we woke her up was because of a favor to our late comrade,” Wilker states.
“Thanks. For that.”
“But we can start our effort to clean the oceans and find any survivors until then. Even with all we’ve been through, with our new-found knowledge we can start farther than we left off. And we can stop this from happening again.”
Noata and Wilker walk away, toward the Starkiller, in front of them, behind the Starkiller are hundreds of dead angels chained to their platforms. Noata lowers his head as he walks.
Thora continues to stare at Cole’s cross.
…
It is twenty years later. Cole stands in front of the same cross. The same once blood red ocean is now only sickly brown. It only took twenty years, instead of millenniums to come back. To become whole again.
He bends down and grabs his wedding ring and holds it. A screen pops up on his arm and shows a map of where Thora is.
He digs a small hole and puts the ring in it. After burying it he stands. It was never the end.
He looks up into the sky, past the clouds and into space as a single star streaks by as the stars disappear one by one.
Postscript
Whew! Thanks for reading. The ending was kind of sudden and didn’t provide that much closure. But the sequel will start off immediately right where Skyeater ended so stay tuned!
In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater Page 36