Good evening! Here's something I wrote back in 2010. Looking back on it, some of it is a little clunky, but I really like the concept and I think some of the imagery is pretty cool. Hope you enjoy!

Lament for a Star

Lachlan Marnoch, 2010

She drifts through the silent void, directed by the unfeeling bonds of gravity, the insensitive strictures of galactic motion. She doesn’t know where. Is there something at the end? A goal to this long journey?
She sees others like her, distant pinpoints following other paths. But they’re too far away, a cold, constant reminder of her isolation. So far away… some of them have a companion, even two. Their very own salvations from loneliness. What company does she have? The tiny rocks that follow her like parasites? The balls of frigid gas that see nothing beyond their own perceived might?
What insights could these leeches possibly offer into the cosmic interactions, the universal dance? They are ignorant of all but their own pathetic vibrations, the ripples in the liquids and vapours that coat their stony surfaces. They survive only on the heat she provides, the light she provides. They know nothing.

And what of the ineffectual specks that inhabit the third leech? Products of a selfish molecule, a transforming process. They look to her, more so than her planets do; they comprehend the ecumenical transactions. For millions of millennia she kept her secrets, from even the mightiest of the stalking singularities. Organisms unlocked them in moments.
But their lives are measured in years; hers in eons. They will be gone before she even begins to expand. She has no use for such fleeting existences. In all probability they will die at her hands, if they don’t die at their own.

One day the fusion that burns at her heart will cease. She will die alone. She knows this. She has seen the abstracted flashes as others of her kind gasp their last. She will not end that way. She lacks the mass to elapse in such a glorious fashion. Not even large enough to become one of the singularities feared across the entire vacuum, layers of her skin will cast off one by one, until her heart is laid bare for the universe to see. A last glowing beacon for her parasites to follow, until her pull disappears completely and they are scattered utterly. Then, finally, her heart will fade and she will depart at last.
No companions to mourn her as she passes her expiry. No-one to care as she turns to the cold and dark, and becomes another blank space in a wide, empty universe.
But then, finally, finally, she will serve a purpose. Her remains, rich in the elements of birth, will become both graveyard and nursery. From her cadaver, after an incubation of heat and pressure, will arise others like her, but fresh, young, and bright.

Then she won’t be alone.