Vega and Daw and The End Of It All

I was born by virtue of chaos and combustion. My birth lit the stars ablaze and sent them hurtling about my expanse. Life blossomed forth from the dust that poured from their fiery forms. I’ve grown a lot since then.

Throughout my life, many have speculated as to when and how I would perish. One particularly crafty race of creatures—humans, they called themselves—had a pervasive obsession with death. Death loomed over them like the Sun and Moon, and they accepted its light out of morbid curiosity. They studied it, wrote of it, and anticipated it vehemently, and in the process, discovered that death is not a facet of their condition unique to them alone. It is the fundamental truth of all things: everything dies.

There was a small terrestrial planet inhabited by a people reminiscent of the Earthlings, though far detached by magnitudes of time and space. I called their planet Daw. While the earthlings were fascinated by death due to short lifespans that kept death ever-imminent, Daw’s people were enthralled by it for a different reason. No, Daw’s people, on average, lived very lengthy lives compared to many species’ I have hosted in the past. Instead, it was their dying sun, Vega, that kept death ever-present on their minds.

While many stars have destructed in magnificently violent and climactic manners, Vega spent the later duration of its existence as nothing more than a smoldering hunk of debris floating in space. Hot spots on its face would burn like acne, but without fusion reactions to take place in its core anymore, all Vega could do was fade away slowly over time. And all Daw’s people could do was watch, so watch they did.

Atop a tall hill overlooking a busy cityscape, there stood a tall tree. It was dressed in eggshell pedals that danced somberly in the planet’s gentle winds, and plump green fruits that were strikingly similar to Earth’s own pears. Tangled up down in the tree’s roots, the lovers rested. I called them Hope and Dismay. Hope was a very optimistic young woman who always looked for the bright spots on the dimming Sun. Dismay wasn’t so content; he was an anxious boy who feared everyday would be the last.

With his head resting in her lap, he said to her, “Everytime we come up here, it’s a little darker. You see it, don’t you? There used to be a hot spot right… there.” He pointed at Vega setting over the horizon. The sky was dark, as usual, and growing ever darker.

Hope snickered as she ran her hand through his hair. “I can’t see where you’re pointing, silly. You could be pointing at some building down there, for all I know. Or some rock.”

“I’m pointing at that spot, right there!”

She slipped her fingers between his and reeled his hand in. He stared up at her with locks of hair drooping over his face.

“Why doesn’t it bother you more?”

She parted the loose strays away so she could look him in his eyes, and she answered his question with her own.

“Why do you always focus on the light that’s gone out when there’s still so much of it left?”

Dismay could not answer.

“I’m going to let go of your hand now, and you’re going to point to one of the dozens of spots that are still burning brightly, okay?”

She released him, and he reluctantly aimed his arm back out, finger taught.

“Are you… are you pointing where I told you to? I still can’t really tell.”

The two of them laughed. Dismay relaxed his arm and shimmied his head more snugly into Hope’s thigh. They slept under the tree that night.

It took many cycles for Dismay’s fears to come to fruition, but they did all the same. He and Hope found themselves back on that hill the night it occurred, as below them, the city was alive with the ecstasy of an ending. Echoed songs reached out to the couple in the night. Dismay stomped forward uphill as Hope struggled behind him.

“Wait! Wait up…” She cried out.

He did not answer her. He paved onward until finally he reached the pear tree again, which he leaned into exhaustedly. His chest lifted and settled rapidly, overworked by the frustration and exertion. Hope caught up with him shortly, panting as heavily as him. The tree was just as she remembered it, save for a particularly perilous pear strung up by a splitting stem. Any minute now, she thought.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, still focused on the fruit.

He rolled his eyes. “What’s wrong?! What’s wrong is… that!”

He pointed out at Vega, whose last light was but a fading ember on its big surface.

“What’s wrong is… it’s happening. And I’m the only one who seems to be affected by it for some reason!”

Hope shook her head as her breath steadied.

“We’re all affected by it.”

Dismay scoffed and pointed to the city.

“Right, that’s why they’ve gone and thrown a festival, I’m guessing?”

Hope turned back to the city, which appeared as a blurry collage of colorful lights that melted all about in her field of view. She turned back to him with amorphous blobs of color lingering in her vision.

“I think the festival is everyone’s way of coping with it... Trying to make something beautiful out of it?”

“What could possibly be so beautiful about the end of our world as we know it?”

Hope took a deep breath, and motioned to the very space around them. Despite the unyielding darkness of the sky, the hill was illuminated by the distant city. Faded songs filled up the air with ambient rhythm. The pedals fluttered down from the overhanging tree in a peaceful cascade, until, as if on cue, a strong gust of wind swept through that shook a wave of them down and sent them swirling around Hope and Dismay. The pedals sparkled in the night light as they swooped through the air, before eventually settling down.

The gust of wind unsettled the pear enough for it to fall. Its descent felt slower than true time—prolonged by the serenity of the moment. Hope reached her hand out and caught it with ease. She focused on it in her hand. It was firm, and ripe, and its skin was ever-so-slightly textured with fuzz. She wanted to take a big bite out of it right then and there.

She refocused on Dismay to find him agape and in tears. He was staring up at Vega, whose last light had gone out while Hope was distracted.

Dismay whimpered quietly in place, and was trying his hardest not to tremble. Hope approached him and, not knowing what else to do in the moment, offered him the pear. Overtaken by the spirit of anger and fear, he swiped it out of her hand and lobbed it with all his might at the tree. It shattered into chunks that scattered to the grass, where he crumpled down himself thereafter. She followed him down and comforted him as he cried and wailed.

“Hey, hey now, listen to me,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him. “I need you to listen to me, okay? Look out there. Look.”

Dismay lifted his head and stared out at the city still glowing in the night.

“Look at all the lights. Look at all of them that are left. They’re so bright that they’re reflecting off of Vega. Vega’s still glowing.”

He looked at the silhouette in the sky. It was faint, but Hope was right: it was there. Daw's surface reflected Vega's artificial lights as best it could, as if returning a favor.

She continued, wiping tears from his eyes as she talked. “And all of those lights are people. People in their cars, or their homes, or out in the streets with lanterns. And they’re not going out anytime soon. Look at me, now.”

He did so.

“Endings leave a lot of room for new beginnings. We can start something new together. We can do that, right? You and me?”

Their eyes were watering and glistening in the light. Dismay blinked hard and nodded his head in confirmation. Hope smiled.

“Where do we start?” He asked innocently.

Hope laughed, and they closed the space between them with a kiss. And in that moment, a new Universe was born betwixt their lips. It started as a spark of something, then exploded into everything. It grew ever larger until it couldn’t grow anymore, and it froze over peacefully as they pulled apart. Behind them, fireworks exploded in front of Vega’s silhouette, filling the sky with new light. Hope and Dismay kissed again, spawning and destroying yet another Universe, and again, and so on. They slept under the tree, just as they had so long prior. It was a peaceful sleep.

Even without Vega’s light, Daw and its people persisted for some time. Hope and Dismay lived long and—I’d say—fulfilling lives together, though they never quite knew the full scope of what occurred that night. They never knew that, long before their time, the night sky was filled with billions of stars just like Vega, or that Vega was the last of them all to die off. They never knew of what the Earthlings called the “Big Freeze”— the theory that after trillions of years of Universal expansion, every celestial body within me would grow too distant for stellar interaction and procreation to occur, and that everything would freeze over in quiet isolation. They never knew that the theory was true.

Still, Hope and Dismay and all of Daw’s people were content. Maybe it was their ignorance that kept them going for so long, or maybe their stubbornness. I suppose that’s just another thing they had in common with humans—persistence, for one reason or another . But, I digress. None of that matters much now. I just find their story to be a touching one to consider as the curtains draw closed.

Everything is cold, and quiet, and still. Vega’s remnants turned to space dust long ago, as did Daw, and Hope, and Dismay, and most everything else that used to make up my body. I’m tired now, so I think it’s time I let myself enjoy the tranquility of the ending I’ve been building up to all this time—the joy of resting under a pear tree and letting the pedals on the wind whisk you away into slumber. I’d like to experience it, if that’s still possible.

As I let my thoughts wander, I ponder Hope’s words one final time.

If endings truly leave room for new beginnings, that begs the question:

What comes next?

I suppose the burden of answering falls to time, if such a thing even means anything anymore.

Whatever the case, I’ve done my part.

It’s out of my realm now.

And I’m out of my own realm.

And I’m gone.