Star's heart

It didn't hurt. 

I felt a huge shove, and then nothing. No pain. No fear. I couldn't feel my body, because I didn't have a body to feel anymore. No sensations, no emotions, no thoughts, nothing. It was like being in between waking and sleeping. A vague sense of time, a vague sense of self, but even those were muddled. Peaceful in its own way, I suppose.

That's when Meissa came.

I could feel them flying around whatever was left of me, lazy swoops through nothingness and void.

Hello again, little one.

Hello, Meissa.

Pay attention, you will need to remember all of this and act quickly.

Maybe moments, maybe hours later, I felt myself colliding with a layered web of strands, thrumming with power far beyond my own. As I broke through the first layer, those strands snapped and spiraled away. Each layer beneath had stronger, thicker strands, but I later realized how impossibly fine they were. At the time, I only had my unraveled self as a point of reference, and what I was colliding with was far more massive than I, even more massive than Meissa.

Strands and webs of power continued to break before me as I barreled into them, only getting through by sheer velocity. I was surrounded by power so great it should have consumed me, had I not been made of the same power myself, just on a smaller scale. Brief entanglements formed and broke as I passed through. Those entanglements sent whatever sixth sense I still had through them, deep into the core of this familiar energy.

Deep into a heart of cold, dense, death.

I hit a web that I could not break. It stretched and rebounded, returning my momentum to me. I flew back the way I came, smashing through reforming webs, then I was surrounded by nothing again.

Meissa returned.

Remember this too, little one. It is just as important.

A gentle flap from their wing swirled through me, and in that draft I found myself partially coalescing. I could almost think again, almost see. A dreary scene slowly came into focus. Featureless gray skies stretched over a graveyard. My family was gathered around one grave in particular. I could see their faces clearly, see the pain on them. The grave was fresh. I glanced down and realized I had a translucent body at this point, but the hair streaming down my shoulders was wrong; too straight, too long, and a rather dull black that cascaded down in a familiar mess that my mother had always frowned at. I walked forward and passed through my family, ghostlike, and looked at the name on the gravestone.

It was mine. Of course. I think I had guessed before even looking.

I could feel emotions again. Bitter rage and resentment shot through me as I turned and looked at the faces of my parents and my older sister, who looked even more adultlike in her business suit than the last time I had seen her. Beyond them, spanning almost across the sky, was Meissa, looking at me. I screamed up at the dragon, somehow knowing that only they could see and hear me.

"Why are you showing me this?!" I stumbled back away from my family, only to find I could not pass through the gravestone; it was solid to me, and icy cold. A light, feathery rain started to fall. "I don't want to see this! I don't need to see this!"

Why not?

"I have a new life!"

Do you feel nothing for their grief?

"Why should I? What's the point?"

Abruptly, the rain increased, turning to sheets in mere moments. My family fled, looking for shelter. My sister hesitated a brief moment. The sound of pounding rain disappeared from my ears, even though the rain hadn't let up. I heard her whisper.

"So that's it, then?"

I had never heard her sound so at a loss. She had always been the sure one, assertive, rarely apologizing for her actions because she could always justify them. But now she sounded like a scared little girl who had done something wrong.

The sound of rain pounded up my eardrums again, and she turned and fled after my parents. Shaken, I opened my mouth, whether to speak or scream or cry I do not know. Meissa descended like a thundercloud, and the scene dissolved with the rain.

                                                  ~~~~~~~<><><>*<><><>~~~~~~~

The world snapped back into focus as I fell through the sky, similar to my arrival in this world. I had a brief impression of a huge shape looming over me, and then it was gone; Meissa. Short blue hair whipped around my face, and ribbons of blue fire trailed behind me like a comet's tail. I realized my hands and feet were gone, but slowly reforming as my mana wound itself back into shape. I looked down and saw a vast mountain range, with a massive city far to the south. Instinctively, I flared my fire in an attempt to slow down as I got closer to the mountains. I could see my trajectory was carrying me straight to the courtyard with the device that had used me up as nothing more than cannon fodder. A handful of spirits were there, with Dschubba and the throat-slitter among them. Dschubba saw me first.

Still going too fast for gentle landing, I crash landed into the pavement and skidded to a stop in front of him. My fire raged around me, whipped into a frenzy. Pushing myself off the ground, I locked eyes with Dschubba. All of my recent fear, anger, and confusion latched onto him as the cause of all my troubles, or at least an extremely convenient scapegoat for them. I clenched my fists at my sides and roared.

"IDIOTS!"

I spat the word out with such force that a breath of fire came after it.

"IDIOTS! You would destroy the lives of others just because you hate your own? You would destroy the sun, and this world, and all the life that is in it, destroy all the good along with the bad, just because of the bad?"

The throat-slitter and the others actually drew back a step from my fury. Dschubba stood his ground, with a look of unrepentance on his face. I screamed the last part of my tirade more at myself than at him.

"YOU SHOULD HAVE SAVED THE GOOD!"

Breathing heavily, I thought over everything I had just seen. I put my hands over my face and groaned as realized what it meant. I dropped my hands and glared at the group as a whole.

"Tell me. Do your medical centers use devices that run on mana?"

Confused silence. A spirit nodded hesitantly. I turn my back on them, unwilling to look at Dschubba any longer, unwilling to see myself in him.

"I'm leaving. Congratulations, Dschubba, you triggered a coronal mass ejection, not that you know what that means. And by the way, don't bother trying to kill your sun; it's been dead for a long, long time already."

I didn't look at him as I slowly spun in a half-circle, swinging my arms in an arc to summon flames that spiraled around me, swirling faster and faster as I held still, the center of orbit to an inferno. Then I shoved the spiral of fire downwards, and launched myself into the sky.