The Sol-Child's Former Home

Like a diamond. An immense and dark diamond with a diameter spanning a million worlds and surrounded by pearls that once held the eyes of billions measuring the magnanimous light emanating from it. The only way to see this grave sight now was with lights from one's own sources.

A Sol-Child always provides such a light; after all, the star was his home.

Doal was given his name not by the Sol-Children, but by those of the worlds that once encircled his home. How long had he been away? He couldn't recall, as memories didn't exactly come with a measurement of time. Perhaps that was why he now faced a sphere that only reflected the light he possessed as he flew through the void. He noted the rest of the orbs, elliptical in design yet dark and dry as the cold of space became the only blanket that covered their surfaces. Even the gas giants had shed their atmospheres, their hardened hearts floating distant and alone. The moons of each world had been flung about, the gravity of the dead star being the only thing keeping them from falling into the blackness.

Doal reached a facet the size of a continent and touched down. His light spread upon the area, cut off at a radius of just a mile. When his feet made contact, a strange vibration echoed forth and spread about; as there was no air in space, no sound would be heard from the physical interaction. For a Sol-Child, though, the vibration was hauntingly hollow as would the sound of a glass object being broken somewhere in a large and empty house. Recognition would soon dawn upon him; for a Sol-Child, an area of their home sun was as easy to find as a worldly being finding its own bathroom.

"We rode a solar flare here", he whispered to himself. Again, in the void, no one could hear him as there was no air and, currently, no atmosphere. For Sol-Children, their atmosphere would be too extreme for the worldly beings designed as flesh and blood; it wasn't just the extreme heat, but the noise and the unpredictable movement of the surface that would have overcome even the strongest of them. Only the compatible races, those combined of both the organic and the energy that connect with and even reproduce with the Sol-Children, could handle their power but would still not come to their home as it was still a star and would dissipate them in a matter of hours. Still, on the outskirts of the corona, they would watch as their offspring would play upon the outstretching flames erupting from the star, their mirth filling the quiet ambience. Now, the only thing that Doal was riding was a hardened corpse that spun with so many stars that could have also gone out.

He continued walking. The expanse was huge, but he had time to reflect. After all, a Sol-Child could live for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of planetary cycles. Plus, he had the Causeways, so there was no rush. Where would he go, anyways?

He stopped at another area a few days later. "Here, we had one hell of a sunspot!" Even if such had passed on while the star was still alight, he could have sworn that this vicinity was cool to the touch, reminiscent of how the temperature of a sunspot would drop significantly as opposed to its surroundings. Being on it would mean waiting weeks unless one wanted to really fight to get off of it, thanks to the magnetic fields gathered there. He strolled across it, feeling nothing different. The gravity was definitely weaker, and the magnetism was all but an echo.

Another few days saw him looking at another region, this one slightly more warped than the rest. "Ah, our very own storm central", he whispered. "Where be the winds that twisted and turned, roaring in our faces as we roared back during our rides?" He reached up a hand, recalling the solar tornado that he and his friends would jump into, revolving at speeds that would tear ships apart yet left them laughing in the maelstrom's wake. If it were possible, he would have shed a tear for such a memory, yearning for that amount of mirth to pile upon the cold and glassy surface once more. But it was just the sounds that he remembered, all in his head and unable to escape into the reality before his very eyes.

Finally, he came to one particular spot. It was perceived by him as the smoothest spot upon this cosmic carrion and still one of the most significant locations. Here, he was brought back and laid down, looked after until the day that he could plant his own two feet upon the plasma that vaporized anything that wasn't like him or like the star. The sun provided sustenance and shelter, a world of his own and with his own people. Though structures formed and disappeared, more could be made as it was energy and they could manipulate it. Now, the only structures that could be formed would have to be cut and shaped by giant tools, all with the aid of light provided by machines generating fractions of pieces of what he and his kind could provide from their own literal beings. "There will be others to come, to claim, to cut, and to even sell." He wiped at his eyes, more as a copied gesture but very much real in reaction. His former home would end up as a resource spot, with every piece to be carved out regarded as little more than a commodity.

Doal looked up to the night sky. There were the lights of the stars looking back at him, but now he wondered: how many of those suns were little more than levitating diamonds, as cold as their current environments, useful only as building materials? He would find out through the method that every Sol-Child possessed at the age of maturity, which was the ability to open the Causeways. These would be like multiple wormholes opened at the same time, roads with different lanes and accessed only by beings of immense powers of energy capable of reaching even through the fields of quantum mechanics to bypass traveling through space itself, saving time (and fuel, as some species managed to break through with great costs to energy). But Doal had to be careful, as he didn't want to end up upon another empty globe.

Before he stabbed through space to commence his journey beyond the void, he turned back to look upon the dark sheen he once called home. "I will find your children", he promised. Then he pushed up and, to all other possible witnesses, he slid out of sight and left behind total silence.