Exodus Nebula

Chapter Five

The plan was to keep sight of the route lest he lose it, though, the Sky Watcher couldn't prevent his gaze from attracting to particular entities of the nighttime sky.

Simply, he opted for one eye on the route, one on the sky, in a sense. At this particular latitude, Akenhymer's Hole sat near the horizon. In his imagination, he could almost place the point-like star at precisely where it had been in the sky in relation to the others, a skill which spoke volumes of both his proficiency and his grief for its disappearance. Clovar and Oli had shone prominently, two rather bright stars themselves, being among the less distant. Closer and far more mobile were the two presently visible planets, Love and Marina, their colors, yellow and cyan, quite distinct. Both worlds orbited the Sun farther out than their own and so it was fortunate that both were present in one nighttime sky. Of the closest and apparently most mobile satellites were the recent Positivist satellites. The smaller ones were often difficult to spot, shallow, dust-like specks racing across the sky, visible for only a few minutes at best before crossing either the opposite horizon or the planet's umbra. Then there were the occasional, more prominent satellites. Large, reflective, spherical affairs designed for intercontinental communication. They were semi-rigid shells filled with vacuum, predominantly reflective in a small range of wavelengths spanning the visible and microwave spectrums. Commonwealth groups--as of recently, largely the Commonwealth army--would bounce encrypted messages off the satellites. Essentially anyone could receive the messages, but only those with the correct decryption algorithms could understand them. Other than the brightest star, Teryk, the satellites were often the brightest objects in the sky due to their large area of reflectivity. Most spanned around twenty meters in diameter, while some others spanned over sixty meters. Their coming into the celestial sphere was often sudden and brief; their low orbit guaranteed them only moments in the sky, some of which they spend befallen in the planet's shadow, no longer reflecting the light from the Sun.

What surprised him was the ass' reactions to the phenomenon of the sky. In his lifetime he had never known an animal to perceive the stars or satellites; he always assumed humans special in that regard, that they have the ability to scrutinize nature beyond their primeval needs. Not that they were the pinnacle of life, but rather that they were, at the least, a step in the right direction. One of the prominent Positivist satellites had arced above the horizon, and Iki stared a moment, as if startled. However, beyond that momentary recognition and dismissal, it continued its trek down the path.

What truly captured his attention with the nighttime sky were the Lights. Often, ever since leaving Auspen, he wished he brought along with him his more sophisticated instruments for study. Yet, he believed that even if he had, the events occur so briefly that it would be far too difficult to create any meaningful observation or recording, not to mention their random nature. He would have to set up his instruments to be focused at one particular point of the sky and hope that one happened to flicker there.

The Lights were peculiar... Few brought attention to it, though, there existed an obvious connection between the Lights and Akenhymer's disappearance. Not one month since, the Lights had begun their stealthy invasion of the night skies. They were the slightest flickers, they were bursts of the faintest luminescence. The Lights were candles concealed within the folds of the darkest curtains, themselves jostled and swayed by the Vanishing, occasionally and briefly exposing their hidden prominences. That was how they began. They began as stories, rumors, thought by most to be the tellings of overimaginitive people shocked by Akenhymer's Vanishing. Though, as the rumors persisted, many began observing, seeing the Lights for themselves. Now, one who dismisses them as such would be hard-finding. They had become a fact of nature, depressed into the clays of recorded history, as real as earth and sky, unnerving and unsettling like the shadows of wolves at the near treeline...