Madness of the Serpent

Convergence

Soaring through space. Gliding through nebulas. Dancing along the fringes of supernovas. Silently skirting the dangerous supermassive black holes. Teasing through the branches connecting the separate, layered dimensions of space and time.

Nothing between the star clusters but dark space. Nothing there, except the ones who frolic where no living thing can survive. They take the inhospitable places of the cosmos and make them their playgrounds. They travel between star systems as easily as living organisms know how to uptake atmospheric gas.

They are the wandering ones who are never lost. They are joyous, yet unalive. Energy without form, sentience without mind. They sing to the stars, ignorant of the bodies they have left behind.

So when the physical body appeared in the void, contorted and frozen in misery and anguish, they observed with interest that stopped short of curiosity. It was a fleshy creature gradually dying in agony, abandoned where even the starlight could not reach.

Poor thing. Poor thing.

They clicked and chided in bursts of light. None would approach the creature too closely, unsettled by its solid mass, its fleshy entombment, its life's energy. Then they simply grew bored and drifted away, slipping between the folds of the universe to where they could swirl about the stars, the lost soul already forgotten from their simple thoughts and short-lived attentions.

But one took pity. A shroud of light which was not completely formless – ethereal but almost reptilian in silhouette. It approached the anguished being, gently floating and twisting around its frozen frame, not close enough to touch but daring to float nearer than the others.

The remaining wisps kept their distance from the suffering creature, their limited forms quivering with strands of flickering light, but this larger, brighter sprite immediately began to investigate the curiosity, its own form shifting through an entire spectrum of colors depending on its impulses and whims.

The frozen body was not completely without consciousness. The spirit noticed two small globules followed its glowing shape as it coiled and swirled around the fleshy thing. Its shape glowed brighter as it recognized sentience in the small globules – they were some kind of ocular organs with which to interpret visible light.

Ultimately useless in a place like this, where even the light of nebulas and supernovas could not traverse. What was an organism such as this doing here?

It did not know, but the creature communicated its anguish quite clearly with the emotions emanating from its being.

The spirit hesitated briefly, but was moved to action as it saw the body beginning to fail. Lungs deprived of air had long ago collapsed; the blood was almost frozen as the organs were encased in ice. This body was strong and unaffected by the cold of nothing-space, but it would not last much longer from the crushing pressure and leeching darkness. Not without aid.

The glowing shape slowly, gently, began to wrap itself tighter around the dying entity. The fleshy vessel was strong, but the spirit had to be careful not to break the bones or tear the skin from its muscles. Or worse, overwhelm its molecular bonds and break the body down at an atomic level. A being of pure energy coming into contact with a biology entity could easily become a fatal encounter.

It was prepared to end the poor being's life if it could not be saved, but the wandering spirit did not want it to die. Life was precious – if fleeting – and should be preserved whenever possible.

The creature fought to live with a ferocity that was unfamiliar to the gentle, glowing shape, and it was caught off-guard – having forgotten the desperate way life clung to its own form. It had long abandoned the notions of conflict and confrontation, of survival and self-preservation. They were obsolete relics for those who no longer had a body.