Written for the Event

12. Space dust and lots of trust

They were cut off from the stars, our guide and ancestors. Vile winds whipped at the ground, life and anything that stood in its way. Whirlpools of black clouds stuck the planet ravishing everything leaving grand fissures in its wake. So much agony screamed into the thinning air, we all can hear it, thousands of minds and souls in pain asking, begging for help, for their families, for safety, for everything to please stop. The darkness was all too consuming, no one could stop if and before we knew it a tidal wave of impenetrable darkness consumed everything, and then there was nothing. Our world was gone. There was no immediate death but no feeling, all of our senses suffocated and unaware that slowly their body was being broken apart before them and breaking piece by piece into smaller pieces till it was impossible if there was anything left. There was no more union of minds, our spirits unable to return home. A final death.

Waking up in a cold sweat, a simple girl by the name of Riven clutched at one of the only things that kept her from freezing in the sub temperatures of the nights on Sanable. The planet was gorgeous, yes, with its rocky purple terrain and light grey like blue skies but the colony that resided on its surface was considerably quite small. On the home world buildings stretched far past the clouds and were interconnected on almost every level to one another. Housing the elites, the most powerful, the iconic and their covens leaders, it was Rivens dream to live there. Her power rare and unique came to her at one of the earliest ever recorded and quite strong at that so being only 16 years old she was on par with any fully fledged witch.

One of Rivens abilities is predictions but no one knew how to help her perfect it, so they can be unclear and inaccurate. Heading down stairs that was the first thing she told her dad over breakfast. He ate slowly in deep thought but waved off her concerns. If such a thing was to be possible then it would mean that there was still a withered rose colony intact and every history book reminds the people of the Gilded brim coven of their victory from the Covens Clash. Withered Roses were hunted to extinction and have been dead for thousands of years. Riven described what needed an entire world full of witches committed to the ritual and prayer to control. So, she watched her father stand up and turn his back on her instead. He will no longer hear any of it.

Riven was desperate, she needed someone to understand and listen to her. Her best friend, Clover was willing to listen to Riven but just like her father, she couldnt believe the prediction to be any way accurate, saying its a bad dream. It was clear to see she was in pain clover does love her and do what she can to help console Riven in her grief but nothing could console her. She left her friend there, on the street, and there turned her back on everyone else.

Riven never was able to call back to what had brought her that dream and so every night she would spend hours, scanning the stars for it, the black matter coming closer. People began to believe that shes become nothing but a crazy recluse, driven to madness by her own magic and will soon no longer be able to function as a normal person properly. Nothing could stop her or pull her away from gazing at the stars, keeping her notebook in her lap, making down each star and galaxy shes investigated to the best of her ability. There are millions of stars and to keep searching something that has all the odds against that its not even there. It took close to two weeks before she found it, a small black stain against the sky she did everything she can to bring peoples attention to but still was she ignored. Black matter clouds werent rare in the universe and that one has been there; shes just now notice it. Little did anyone know that spending every night scanning the stars that, only weeks prior did her notes tell her that this had not been there before.

Since everyone still continued to sum her up to be nothing but a crazy woman in the making, she begins research on her own. Studying and looking for answers on how to combat the matter, what could be done to ward it off, and even what ritual to preform to control it by ones own self but the research supplies were so limited. And nothing gave her any proper or direct answer, truths and answers lying between the evasive exaggerations and glorification in bias. With thousands of notes, sleepless nights, she completed a large essay to present to her home council.

Time had come for her presentation. In the center of the room with spotlight on her and the white witches resting in position, towering above. Not allowing herself to be choked up by fear she presented her case but fate was not in her favor. The council saw a frail, malnourished girl, driven mad from her own power who now can barely take care of herself, unkept and sleep deprived. She was sentenced to a life sentence of rehab, to be watched and looked after so she will not become a danger to herself and the small society they had. She was taken away fighting, the people watching in pity and relief that her madness may now be contained. Only two hearts were stricken with grief that night.

With all of her notes and research destroyed, Riven spent her nights gazing at the stars until her medication put her to sleep. Her days now routine, led by her caretaker her mind numbed to the rest of the world and everything around her as night by night she watched the black ink, spread, consuming the stars and their directions one by one. It was unfortunately then that the counsel began to form their own research, to far from Rivens own and much too slow to turn to anything useful. The cloud was too close to home when they considered reaching out to the home world. Anything sent just out of the atmosphere was instantly consumed. The mind link was blocked and nothing able to come through. Just like her prediction, the frail black-haired girl watched through the glazed over fog of her mind as the darkness descended onto the world. In a panic people were desperate, just like shes seen so nothing was a surprise. The caretaker didnt care to lock her door that day, no one cared to do their job anymore, they just wanted to keep running and screaming for their lives just like everyone else. Almost in a sleep walk, she walked through the destruction. The world was crumbling. No one noticed her in the post office. There world was so young and new, no one else in the universe would think anything of their disappearance. Just another failed colony. But this attack. Their planet wouldnt be the only one, it was just the first. Grabbing paper, she mindlessly wrote. stuffed the letter into a capsule and held the canon to her chest and waited looking to the sky. Destruction. The tidal wave. And then the nothingness. She wanted to squeeze her finger that lay on the trigger unsure if she did or not, unsure if she even had an arm left and if the letter would get out. All she knew was, if she could feel it, she was crying.

Somewhere in space, a small desperate note, flew out of the body of an ambiguous black mass, looking for someone to take it in. To tell someone simply:

"If youre reading this, know we're gone. Sanable, code 87:xlsb of the Satrum solar system. Theres a cloud of black matter that ate our home. It was controlled and yet my home could not bring themselves to believe me so I hope you do now, before its too late. Warn who you can and tell them to prepare, locate the black coven. Its somewhere in the Tundris galaxy. My research is also gone. You need to find it, fast."

Years later. On the shore of the Floridian coast line, a small child rummaged through the trash that piled up the beaches, in the way of more floating in the waters looking for a spot. She picked out a somewhat shiny but filthy cylindrical container, deemed it was a satisfactory gift for her mothers birthday. Such a small item, light in weight but heavy in the impact it is about to have on her young fragile life.