Empyrean Iris Story Collection

A Little Light

The world around him was white, a white blinding haze that seared his eyes and burrowed into his brain so profoundly it made his ears ring, not a quiet ringing, but a loud almost ear splitting ringing that burrowed into his head and drilled through the small bones in his middle ear. Aside from the ringing there was only silence accept for his own ragged breathing gasping that, made the space around him humid despite his visor's inability to fog.

He stumbled over his own feet, for it had to be his feet since the ground about his was completely flat, A dessert of salt stretching for miles in all directions, pure white against the roaring power of the blue-white star, a star so bright even the sky had been bleached white. He tried to open his eyes, tried to find where he was going but was immediately blinded. He tried to scramble for the visor on his helmet but found there to be none there, snapped off.

He stumbled again, this time falling to his knees on the vast white nothingness.

He could feel the crunch through his gloves and boots, rattling up through his knees, but it was as if he stared down at his own body white against paper, in a ceaseless void filled with not but light. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried for the comm again.

"Harben- harbinger, this is.... This is Commander Vir... I, my ship.... Was malfunctioned. I Have fallen and.... I can't eyes... help, send please..... Think I may have been.... Damaged." More light, blinding him driving into his skull like screws being driven in with a power tool. He lifted his hands to his ears as the light grew stronger bringing the ringing to a crescendo.

He fell backwards barely feeling his body hit the ground, knowing that something had happened only for the slight vibration through his body, like the slamming of a door seen only in the ripples on a glass of water. Light bombarded him from above the ringing grew louder. His hands fell to his sides as he fell, mercifully into blackness.

***

There was a disturbance, they had sensed it some time ago, a distant disturbance in the distant sky. They did not see it, but felt it. Waves of sight, particles of distortion washing over them. They do not sense the light that beats down from above, only the infrared radiation of their distant star which sustains them. Besides that, the landscape is flat blackess warmed occasionally in spots of unfathomable color by the heat of their star. They can sense it like they sense particles of radio light given off by their brethren. Light is their survival, light is their spawn and their life. They sense everything, and with their light comes a great euphoria. They love light.

They float now, great billowing sails propelling them in silent, slow-motion arcs over the landscape. Below them their great flexible appendages wave and quiver, two long in the front, and a hundred shorter trailing in the back. They float, though it seems as if they swim, cutting through the light the way a sting-ray cuts through the water. They are silent, ethereal, and somewhat strange. They do not move quickly for they see no need simply floating through the white, surrounded by light and the rolling waves of radio chatter from their companions.

With the radio waves gone.

They are silent, though their world is not.

It startles them, when it appears on the horizon, a spot of light under the glorious rays of their star. It does not belong there, for, even though the ground is bright, this thing is brighter. They approach on trailing ribbons of their own limbs gracefully floating, floating, floating. They make it eventually, towards the bright spot.

It sheds light and heat, though it is covered by darkness.

The shape is not something they have seen before, it is alien and unknowable. Behind it, it leaves traces of it's path, back in the direction of the disturbance. It does not fit on this landscape, it does not belong here. It tracks pieces of itself behind it.