The stars were few and fading overhead. Correno kept his head bowed as he walked across the grass towards the ruined observatory, so that he might not have to look at them. He did not want to weep yet. The moment was too soon for his grief.
The air was cold, and it bit at him through his thick robe, bringing a slight tear to his eye. Correno wiped it away and kept on walking. The grass felt good on his bare feet. He enjoyed the feeling of something alive under his feet. Living things were so rare anymore, in this lonely dying universe.
He had come here twenty years ago, fleeing the end of reality itself as so many others were. But even here there would soon be no refuge from the cruel laws that had forged the universe and were now even unmaking it. Soon, even this place would succumb, and then where would they all go? So many races, even here at the end of time itself. And all to face the void together.
Correno shook his head. He tried not to think of his friends at moments like these. It hurt him too much to consider that soon, maybe very soon, they would no longer exist. Not simply die, but be unmade in the most absolute definition of the word. Thinking about that hurt too much.
Shadows haunted the observatory. Correno drew a candle and match from beneath his robe. He placed the candle on a waist-high block, then struck the match and lit the candle. It cast even stranger shadows in that ancient place. Perhaps those shadows remembered whatever elder race had made the observatory, and even now imitated them in cruel mockery of that which was not immortal. The shadows were always immortal, for they were the very absence of light. When all the stars were gone, then there would be no more light, and they would reign forever.
The candle light illuminated a telescope, its body fashioned of burnished copper, pointed towards one last star apart from all the rest, burning in the midst of this last night. Correno had brought it here with him those two decades ago, a true scientist. He took out a bundle of paper and a pencil from his robe and put it on a block near the telescope. Then he put his eye to the view piece.
The star hung there, one last glowing orb suspended in the vastness of space. Correno looked aside for a moment and made a few notes on his paper. He was an astronomer to the end, even an end such as this one. The star was shifting radically. Tonight, tonight it would happen.
Correno looked back at the star through the telescope. Even now, it began to diminish in size. A silent tear ran down the man’s face as it dimmed. At last, it blinked out. Correno closed his eyes and opened them again, hoping that perhaps he had simply been seeing things. But no. The star was gone. And there was no force that might bring it back.
Correno leaned to one side and scribbled out some last notes on the paper. Tears fell on the yellowed scraps, but he did not care.
“Correno!” called a voice. “Correno, my friend!”
Correno looked up. It was his friend Benjari, coming to him at a slow jog across the grassy field. The astronomer dried his eyes and tried his best to look somewhat optimistic.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice a bit choked.
Benjari slowed down and walked into the ruins. He stopped when he saw his friend’s face. “Correno, what troubles you?”
“What doesn’t trouble a man in this age?” Correno asked, and let a bitter laugh sink in his chest.
“Tell me, I beg of you,” Benjari said. He sat down on a block across from Correno, his elbows on his knees and his gaze fixed.
“Not a few moments ago, Sol burned out,” the astronomer said.
Benjari looked up at the sky. A half-whispered prayer left his lips when he saw the absence of that singular star. “So it is.”
Correno swallowed. “Is that all you are capable of saying, friend? That was Sol, our ancient home, the star about which Earth of long ago turned and whirled. And now it is gone, gone forever.”
“What of it? Earth of long ago died long ago. In a sense, Sol did too. You only just saw it’s light.”
“But it’s what it means, Benjari,” Correno said, standing up and looking at the space where Sol once was. “It’s what that means. Nothing is sacred. Not anymore.”
“Eagles’ Wings is,” Benjari said, standing also with Correno. “We may have faith in it.”
Correno frowned and lowered his head. He did not put much faith in that rocket that the others toiled over daily.
“Friend, why do you begrudge us our last hope?” Benjari asked. Correno turned back to him. There seemed to be the slightest hint of a hurt look in his eyes. The astronomer broke his frown.
“Friend, I do not mean to begrudge it,” he said. “But I do not share in it. There is no hope in tales cobbled together from many ancient myths. Not for me.”
“But Kolob is there,” Benjari insisted. “We can see it. The sensors tell us that it is there, beyond the Curtain.”
“The sensors tell us that there is something there,” Correno said. “They do not tell us what its true nature is. The preachers say that it is Kolob, and that beyond it is the Deity himself.”
“But why shouldn’t it be? Why can it not be a sanctuary against the end?”
“How does one solitary star, with one solitary planet, exist outside the universe? And if you say, by the will of the Deity, then where is that will when the sky is void and dark? Nowhere. If there were a Deity, then either he has died as well or his end is soon to come.”
“How can you speak so, friend?” Benjari asked. “For shame, your grief has overcome you.”
“My grief is but a temporary release. Later, I shall be as I was before. But now, now I speak a new thing, a blasphemy.” Correno looked up at the night sky. Tears still traced down his face. He wept for a moment, then spoke again. “Perhaps we are not meant to leave. Perhaps we are meant to stay.”
Benjari’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Friend, what do you say? What has taken hold of your senses?”
“Does the grass last forever, Benjari? No. It withers, and it dies, and is blown away as refuse. We are grass, friend. There is an end for everything. An end that none may turn aside, an end that shall always find us at the destinations of our respective roads. This is just the final leg of the journey. We are all around the bar now, but we are packing our bags when we ought to be drinking. One last drink, to remember what came before. ‘One taste of the old times sets all to rights.’ And the poet was right. We remember, and then we go on. We end. You, I, the others. We all go down to an end that was decreed for us at the very beginning of time. Not in fear, but with pride.”
Correno sighed and did not speak again. He simply stared ahead into the night, where the shadows played. An idle breeze blew out the candle, but neither man did anything about it. At last, Benjari stepped forward and put his arm around Correno.
“My friend, my dearest friend,” he said, and he hugged him close. Correno put his arms around Benjari and the two embraced, and shed their own tears for their own reasons. Benjari turned and looked at the field. “The grass does pass on, yes. But does it not send out seeds first? It is decreed to pass on, yet it does not give up. It knows not if its seeds will prosper in the void that is the wind, but it sends them out anyway. You do make a good point, Correno. We are as the grass.”
The astronomer laughed and held his friend close. “I shall have to quit talking of metaphysics with you, my friend.”
“Or choose for yourself better parables,” Benjari said with a chuckle.
“Indeed.” Correno broke away and gathered up his paper and pencil. “I suppose that tomorrow night I shall look to the Curtain, won’t I?”
“If you wish,” Benjari said. “Why shall you look though? You have said you do not believe in Kolob.”
Correno walked back over to Benjari. “I am skeptical that whatever is out there is Kolob. But, that does not change the fact that there is still something out there. That something is the universe’s last great mystery. What kind of learned man would I be if I did not try to discern what it was?”
Benjari smiled. “A poor one indeed.”
“Quite right. But that is work for another night. Come. I have a store of drink in my cabin. We shall drink together, you and I. We shall talk of all that has passed. Though humble it may be, we shall hold a wake for Sol.”
Benjari nodded thoughtfully. “Sol, the dearly departed.”
Correno held out his hand to let his friend take the lead. Benjari walked forward and the astronomer followed him. They made their way back across the dark field towards the cabins of the last human city in the universe. The darkness of space was behind them, but before them the Curtain shown in the sky, a veil of indescribable colors that cast no light.
*
"Or see the grand beginning, Where space did not extend?
Or view the last creation, Where Gods and matter end?
Me thinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space,’
Nor seen the outside curtains, Where nothing has a place."
“If You Could Hie to Kolob”- 2nd Verse
just sounds redundant to me as the reader.
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