Stella Moriens
by Faraz Rezai
It was through the embers of my dying flame that I found myself acquainted with this most enduring of memories. Perhaps…it is my only memory, for my own birth evades me as does the silence of my life. For aeons, I had been everything, a shining beacon of warmth dancing to the melodies of silence. My great fire blazed throughout the cosmos, lighting the void and the great nothing, as my tendrils stretched to the furthest reaches of space, trickling beneath the darkness and resting over all that was and would ever be. My skin shimmered gold, and my mane flared hot and reckless. I was everything. Soon I would be nothing.
In spite of my brilliance, the prospect of my demise had never much concerned me. Over the years I had seen enough of my kin burn themselves to nothing in the distant black, but I had not afforded them compassion. To me, they had been feeble. They did not shine as bright as I, so they were not worthy of my pity. Pity and compassion, such things were beyond me. Absorbed in my sublimity, I was contented simply to burn. But when my time finally came, when my light began to flicker and my crest to swell, when my tendrils retreated and my skin spoiled sallow, by then eternity had numbed my conscience and lulled my soul. As my light dwindled, so dwindled my resolve. I was not afraid. Not afraid, so much as hollowed. As I beheld my fading light, watched it draw and give way, I wondered only why. Eternities of light and nothing. Fleeting. I had burned only to die. It was then, amid the dawn of my finality, as I stared over the bleakness which once welcomed my blaze, that a middling clump of rock in my orbit first gave birth.
At first I dared not turn my gaze. Over the years, the pride of my solitude had impressed its detachment upon me. To be sure I had some brothers left, shining dimly in the barren distance, but they were as far and dwindling as the oblivion which devoured my light. I wished only to perish in silence. But the rock did not share my conviction. It proved unrelenting. From the corners of my eye, I glimpsed the primordial colours as they spread like sleeves over the crevices of the world. I heard the weak shuffling of the verdure as it fumbled up towards me, and the crashing of foam as it swallowed the land. But still, I did not expect much. It was strange, but I had witnessed enough strangeness in my time. Great bodies that swam in celestial union. Auroras and novas which glittered like sparks. What more could a rock offer me in these final years? A rock whose skin quivered with half-formed larvae? A rock which had become a womb?
Before long I felt the restlessness pulsing. Even distracted as I was, I could feel the brimming heat of expectancy blowing like a breeze. The rock crooned and thrummed with fullness, its fullness spreading to the galaxy as once did my fire. Then it burst. A thunderous eruption of matter. A deafening cacophony of form. All manner of shape and substance bubbled to the surface, a plethora of life, climbing, crawling, clambering. With dogged persistence, these new forms clutched at the breast of their rock, and in turn the rock cradled them with her lullabies. Her womb became a forge, a crucible, where the fluids of her birth mingled to become ever newer and ever stranger. Behemoths glided through her foam. Amoeba slithered through her fissures. They spread like darkness, scaling dirt and depths and sky, feeding from each other, merging and melding and birthing anew. In all my eternities, I had seen nothing like it. Slowly, I found my gaze turning. This meagre clump of rock, nestled in my shade, had succeeded where all else had failed.
But as quickly as she bloomed, the little rock staggered. A foreign body, envious perhaps. The rock was struck, and fire consumed her crucible. The crag’s face, once rich and teeming, blistered, as the melodies of her forms were smothered by symphonies of pain. The death throes of her children rang across the galaxy, writhing and twisting, pleading with nihility. But nihility held its vow. The cries persisted. As I watched the fires rage and darkness spread, howls and shrieks giving way to nothing, I reproached myself. I reproached myself for my weakness. For my daringness. Suspended in my isolation, I had thought such things beyond me. I prepared to turn away. But as the dust settled and the howling ceased, out of the ashes of that barrenness, rose the most dogged and persistent creature of them all.
From scars and dirt this new breed crawled forth, dragging itself to the surface. It clung to its rock with lust and vigour, enduring through every calamity. With new life it spread, further than the forms before had ever dared to dream, fanning the heat of its flame to every crook and crevasse of its world. Before long, it had invented knowledge, devised narratives, fabricated speech. Complex systems were created to distract from the preposterity of its being; its absurdity was channelled into intricate expressions of beauty and art. I watched, mesmerised, as these trivial forms endowed themselves with eminence, singing and dancing and ravaging their way to godhood. In time they even turned their gaze to me, and for the briefest moment, I felt the warmth of an unknown glow awaken inside me. But exceptional as they were, even gods are chained to eternity.
As I now take my final breath, deep and hollow, no trace remains of those mighty creatures who once lit up the skies. Those meagre specks of flesh, who for but an instant, waged war against futility. They have whispered out. In the end, they were but a fleeting spark against the candle of my life. They shone bright, perhaps even brighter than I, but now they are gone. Beneath me, the aged clump of rock drifts in soulless orbit, crumbling, indifferent to the struggles, passions and dreams which once inhabited her. She does not remember. Only I remember. A sole and final witness. What then, are these words? Words which do not exist in my world. Fragments to which I have clung for some unknown reason. Perhaps this is a eulogy. A tribute. An ode to nothing. For with my next exhale, as my final breath flows, the memory of these children will be lost, even to me. With my next exhale, the last memory of that fleeting spark, that flickering light which was mankind, will be forever buried beyond recollection.
BIO: Faraz is a Contemporary Literature MA student with King’s College London. He actively writes for the literature/art sections of the Strand magazine, and has recently had his first piece published in the RARE anthology.