White dwarf.

You meet impermanent people in impermanent places, fading, fading into the mist.

You meet dying people, waning humans — people who die as children, as teenagers and who are never reborn. You meet them in the last light of their days before they fall, before they fade. And for one moment, you glimpse eternity in them, in their soft lostness, their innocent erring into the world. You see the fates of millions before them and millions after them mirrored in their existence. In their frail bodies, you glance at a flicker of permanence in a world of ephemeralities.

At the crack of dawn, at no hour, you chase that bit of rawness in them, warmth against warmth, feverish for that last light in them because you know it will die — and you don’t want it to be alone as it does.

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Note: “White dwarf” actually refers to the remnants of a star that has died. The “white dwarf” that remains is actually what used to be the star’s core.

Speckled across the firmament

Gif by Unknown Artist

Speckled across the firmament, pieces of you and I.
Flesh calls to spheres of fire
recalling the stars we once were.

Deserve (Short Story)

Art by 미지

“It’s easy to think that you are little when the world is so big. Insignificance comes too easily to your mind, but remember— You, with your tender heart and kind soul, deserve to be here as much as the forests or mountains. You are small but mighty. You are small but you live. You can do this, and more.” whispered the ancient spirit of the Feilglahd forest, as she sent a gentle breeze to ruffle the boy’s already messy hair.

“Humans,” she mused as the boy ran to his destiny, emboldened now. “They never know their own strengths, and when they do…” she sighed, her eyes going even paler as they landed on the decimated trees nearby, “they think they can never be weak again.”

She turned to look at the boy’s disappearing silhouette again.

“But you, you will be different.”

And in a gust of wind, she disappeared.