Exodus Nebula

Prologue

She stood at the shore's sands, just beyond the lapping reach of the sea. Dusk coruscated on a searing, golden ribbon at the horizon. Opposing it, at the other end of the hemisphere, a moon--the Moon--hanging near the forest crownline, perched on invisible guy wires descended from the shaded ceiling of sky.

She looked out again at the vessel, an immense, seed-shaped affair suspended not ten meters above the undulating sea surface, silhouetted now by the humbling Sun. [Thank you,] she regarded the spirit a final time. She watched as its silent thrusters lifted it away, the faintest glow of Cherenkov radiation emanating from its thrust cones. With her newfound knowledge, she knew there existed rarified particles and altered quantum fields within each thruster cavity, each flavor of exotic particle living just long enough to impart their momenta before decaying into other, wholly unnatural particles foreign to this very universe.

Such physics met her with a certain, intimate beauty.

Her guardian stepped into the picture, taking her by the hand, watching beside her as the vessel tore noiselessly up through the atmosphere, dissipating its own Mach cone, the light of raw, unadulterated sunlight making it shine like distant, silvery galactic nuclei. Her guardian had only rudimentary knowledge of her travels--nothing of the life she had lived before. "What did the journey teach you?" She tilted her head to hide watery eyes. Her guardian tilted her back, thumb brushing her temple.

Her reply was premeditated: "I'm still figuring that for myself." There was much to figure out in this new life of hers. She parted her guardian, taking her first, diffident steps into the frigid lips of the sea. She breathed the brisk air, detecting exotic redolences freighted on subtle and continuous ocean winds. "I was learnt a new perspective," she suggested, resuming her tentative steps into the sea. The sky had grown darker and she spotted what perhaps could have been a familiar star, a trivial point of light, likely one of uncountable millions without a name... "I think more of the far, departed future."

Her dress slipped and left her, carried to the shore by the impulsive waters. Her guardian tilted to look away. "Where are you going?"

"I'm not sure, yet," was her reply. She arched to the waters, her hands carving through their harsh rhythms like poor hydrofoils. She felt for the waterborne sand particles, reminded of her witness of thousands upon thousands of passing stars, in the chambers of the vessel, in a space and time long yet to come. "No, I'm not yet sure," she spoke quieten and alone. The vessel was now far beyond the atmosphere, rejoined with the sunken abyss of expanding space.

She joined the waters, becoming lost in all that they claim to know.