Chapter 45. "My Stella Cronas"

(as told by Professor CocoNuvalla)
The forest breeze hummed low and lazy,
brushing dandelion wisps over the sun-drenched stones.
The children of the Divide sat in crooked rows—half on logs, half on their knees, all of them pretending not to squirm with energy.

Professor CocoNuvalla stood before them,
wrapped in a cloak of woven colors, feathers layered with leaves,
her long sinuous tail swaying behind her like a lullaby.

She blinked once, twice—her thin neck tilting as her mouth curled into a massive grin.
All teeth. All mischief. All love.

“Now—before we begin—remind me, class…”
“What’s my name?”

“CocoNuvalla!” the class rang out.

“Mmhmm~ But what can you call me if I make your brains hurt with too many big words?”

“Coco!”

She laughed—a bright, warbling sound like bubbles in a harp.

“Correct! Now today, my sweet pollen puffs, we are not learning about moss or mushrooms or mystery crushes—”

The kids snorted, already elbowing one another.

“Today… I’m going to tell you about something far older than frogs and forests.”

She took a breath.
Her eyes narrowed, smile fading into something reverent.

“I’m going to tell you the story of the Stella Cronas.”

A hush fell.


                                                       ==--The Story Begins--==

“Before time had teeth,
Before the rivers chose their names,
Before the first wound was ever bandaged—
There were four evils born into the world…”

She began to pace, arms moving in wide sways, her tone poetic, winding.

“There was The Lady in the Forest,
whose laughter could turn entire cities to moss.

There was The Hunger,
a hole in the shape of a man, who ate joy like fruit.

There was The Dragon of Time,
whose death would crack tomorrow clean off the hinge.”

She stopped.

Face solemn.

“And then…
There was the Stella Cronas.”

The children blinked.

One kid raised their hand—immediately yelling without being called on:

“Waitwaitwait—ISN’T THAT THE GUY YOU LIKE!?”

Chaos.

Laughter.

More “OOOHHHHH”s than any one story should earn.

Someone made smooching noises. Another tried to chant “Coco and the Bad Guy~” like it was a scandalous song.

CocoNuvalla turned crimson-blue down her cheeks, tail stiff as a stick.

“No no no no—I—Children! I do not—Listen!”
“He was the Stella Cronas, not is! Big difference!”
“He’s—he’s very different now! I—OH STOP THAT GIGGLING!”

But her teeth betrayed her.
That smile was back.

She pressed her long fingers together, bowing her head.

“The Stella Cronas… was not a man.
He was a force.
A crown made of falling stars.
A wound made of music.

He was cursed with memory.
And blessed with forgetting.

And when he stood at the edge of the world—he leapt.”

The children sat still. Finally quiet.

“Some say he fell from grace.
Others say he chose it.

And now he walks again,
not as a god…
but as a question.”

------
The wind shifts. The color of the sun darkens a little behind the clouds.

Professor CocoNuvalla stood straighter now, her wings twitching softly as if dusting off sorrow.

"But let me be clear with you, my little sproutlings…"
“Stella Cronas is not just a name.”

“It’s a title.
A crown.
A curse.”

She walks between the seated children now, slowly—like she’s drawing a line between past and present with her serpentine trail.

"The one you saw today—the monochrome one—"
she smiles again, faint and pained,
"he holds the title now… though I pray he doesn't want it."

“No…
The first Stella Cronas was a monster.”

           🌌   ==--The First of the Stella Cronas--==🌌

“The first Stella Cronas…
was not like the man we see today.”

Her eyes briefly flicked again toward the tree line.
Toward the ghosts in the sun.

“No, the original one came from another world entirely.
A world above—beyond—between.
A world of mirrors and screaming stars.”

She stepped closer, tail weaving behind her in serpentine sorrow.

“He was a twin,” she whispered,
“To The Hunger.”

Gasps.
One child dropped their moss sample.

She nodded.

“Yes.
The very same Hunger who cursed us—
turned Holokons into cannibals.
Made us devour our own kind…
Until we turned to sugar and spice just to survive our urges.”

She tapped her own bag of candy with a rueful smile,
the sweets rattling softly—like bones in a box.

“But the Stella Cronas?”
“Oh… he was worse.”

Now even the wind held its breath.

“He was always hungry.
But not for food.
Not for power.
Not even for pain…”

She turned, looking at each child with her glowing, slit-pupil eyes.

“He was hungry for forests.
For memories.
For you.”

Silence.
Not fear. Just… awe.

“Where Hunger forced mouths to open,”
“Stella Cronas never asked.
He simply walked...
And the world wept.”

“The spirits that once danced in dewlight—he swallowed them.
The glades that once whispered songs of the moons—he choked them down.

He hated it.
He cried.
But he ate.”

Her voice cracked.

She looked away.
For a moment, even her tail curled in on itself like a wilting fern.

“He was a curse…
to himself most of all.”

One brave child raised a paw.

“Then… why didn’t he stop?”

CocoNuvalla gave a long breath.

Then answered in the softest voice she’d used all day:

“Because when you are born hungry…
you never learn how to be full.”

Then, she smiled again—small and trembling.

“But the story’s not done, pollen petals.
Not even close…”

“Because one day…
The Stella Cronas fell.”

“And what he became...
might just be the reason our skies still shine.”

She clapped once, gently.

“Now… who wants a sugar root and to guess what color his crown used to be?”

(The class erupts into excited guesses—“Gold!” “Black!” “RAINBOW!!!”)

(The one CocoNuvalla would never tell her class)

When the children had gone—
when their laughter had faded into the amber treetops and the moss stopped echoing—
CocoNuvalla stayed.

She stood before the stones, the colors of her shawl fading to dusk.
And softly, to no one at all, she spoke.

“There’s one more chapter,” she murmured.
“The part they mustn’t learn. Not yet.”

Her eyes dimmed. Her feathers drooped.

There once was a monster named Stella Cronas,
and his hunger was without end.
He devoured light, he devoured music, he devoured memory—
until the world became a dim gray mouth, echoing with its own heartbeat.

But one day… he found a young man.

Not a warrior.
Not a god.
Just a soul whose laughter was alive.
He carried in his chest a rose,
a heart so pure it sang even as it bled.

And the Stella Cronas, blind with longing, swallowed him whole.

Inside his belly, where the eaten stars slept,
the rose bloomed.
Each petal burned, each thorn struck deep.
And for the first time, the monster felt—

Joy.
Fear.
Shame.
Love.

He looked inward and saw that what he’d eaten was not a man at all,
but Life itself.

He fell to his knees,
and the world trembled.

In his despair, he fled to the outskirts of all creation,
where the snow never melted and the rivers sang in reverse.
There he met an old Sahash Farmer,
a creature with hands like cracked bark and eyes full of seasons.

The Farmer took pity on him.
Taught him to till soil instead of flesh,
to sow seeds instead of graves.

“If you cannot stop the hunger,” the Farmer said,
“Then feed something that wants to grow.”

The Stella Cronas tried.
He planted.
He watered.
He waited.

And still… he could taste the rose.
Still, he remembered the man he’d eaten.

But the world above had already burned.
The Hunger War had begun.

Brothers turned on brothers.
Holokons devoured their kin until only the sweetest flesh remained.
And the Dragon of Tomorrow screamed so loudly that even the stars broke into dust.

The Farmer was taken by the war.
The fields turned to ash.
And the Stella Cronas—
finally understanding love, and loss—
collapsed beneath the weight of both.

He tore the rose from his own chest.
He tried to give it back to the world.
He screamed an apology so deep it cracked the oceans.

“Take it back,” he said.
“Take the heart.
Take the warmth.
I am not worthy to hold it.”

And as the rose fell from his hand—
as its petals scattered into flame—
the monster fell with it.
Through sky.
Through snow.
Through silence.

And then…
he woke up.

Not in light.
Not in fire.
Not in forgiveness.

He awoke alone,
his own body heavy with rot and memory.
The wound where the rose once bloomed now hollow, pulsing, echoing.

He had torn out his love.
Begged for death.
And still… he remained.

Why?

Even the spirits do not know.
The threads of this tale are muddy,
clouded in broken record-song,
scattered across black petals in ash-swept corners of forgotten worlds.

Some say the Divide itself rejected his death.
Some say the rose never truly died,
and now lives buried in the earth, pulsing like a slow heart.
Others whisper that The Question—the one who walks—
must always be asked again.

Yet despite all this,
the Monster rose.
He stood, his body aching with guilt,
his soul stitched together by stolen warmth and fractured hope.

He walked again.
Not as a god...
but as a promise.

It was then that he heard of the Hunger’s return.
The war was not over.
It had grown.

The forests choked with ash and spirit blood.
The rivers ran backward, churning with laughter.
The Formor Queen had gathered armies,
but no creature—not dragon, not dream, not moon-blessed saint—could stop what had come.

So the Monster walked into the war.

He did not ask to lead.
He did not wear a crown.
He asked for a sword.
And a name.

“Call me Stella Cronas,” he said.
“Not the one who devours.
But the one who remembers.”

He fought beside the Formor Queen,
not as beast but as a shield.
He turned on his own blood.
He stood against his twin,
against The Hunger that had cursed them both.

And on the black battlefield of the final moonfall,
he struck him down.
The Hunger—the World-Eater,
the first to gnaw upon brothers’ flesh—
was slain.

By his own kin.
By the one who had learned to hurt… and love.

But even love
cannot survive betrayal.

The Queen, beloved by her people,
knew what would come next.
A monster, forgiven, would soon be adored.
They would forget what he had once done.
Forget the war.
Forget the first man devoured.

So she struck him down.
With a spear made of broken oaths and bone-petals.
In front of the Holokon court.

He did not fight back.

He smiled.
“I understand,” he said.
“It’s easier to love a story than a monster.”

And he fell—
once more—
into silence.

But—

Stella Cronas is not a name.
It is a title.

A lie crafted by poets.
A mask worn by love.
A curse disguised as honor.

Because the truth is this:

What cannot die… returns.
Again.
And again.
With new names.
New dreams.
New hungers.
And no memory of what they were before.

Some say he is still walking.
Some say he is many now—
a thousand reborn souls
wearing different skins,
haunted by the scent of roses and war.

And if you ever meet someone who cries over nothing—
who weeps at lullabies or stares too long at stars—
who eats candy as if trying to remember a taste long lost—

Be kind.

For they may be a Stella Cronas,
dreaming of a life they never lived