If anyone had been walking through the town of Four Points so late at night, they would have seen a faint blue light spitting and sputtering high above the ground. They would have seen a light at the top of the Fifth Point tower.
The ShopKeeper was up there, and he had his own quintescope, nearly identical to the one he had lent out that afternoon.
Lowering one gleaming blue eye to the glass, he aimed the scope at the heavens. Through the lens, Stars that were invisible to the naked eye could be seen, clear and shining and made stunningly huge by the extraordinary power of the scope. Quintessence was visible as well, spheres of brilliant, burning gold within each Star.
The ShopKeeper located the red supergiant first. She was easy to find, as enormous and scarlet as her name suggested, more brilliant than a hundred thousand suns, and filled with the golden Light that could only be seen through the quintescope.
“What a sight, what a sight!” the ShopKeeper breathed. “Such marvelous Quintessence!”
As the ShopKeeper knew well, a Star so large did not live very long, several million years or less. This Star was surrounded by her sisters and brothers, but although they had begun forming around the same time as her, they were still very young. They were mostly red dwarf Stars, smaller and cooler and able to live for ten trillion years or more—practically forever.
It was to one of these, a young copper Star, that the ShopKeeper now turned his attention.
“There you are,” the ShopKeeper sang out. “Oh, I fear it will be hard for you, little Starling! It is always hard when one so young falls. But the Elementals are here. They will help you. And you will help them!”
The Starling shone on, and the ShopKeeper moved the eyepiece back to the red supergiant. She was more luminous than ever.
Because Stars always shine brightest right before their end. And two hours ago, the red supergiant’s core had collapsed.
“Three,” the ShopKeeper whispered.
Once that happened, it was only a matter of time.
“Two.”
The great red Star gave an immense shudder and then—
“One.”
—she exploded.
The sky was suddenly lit by a blinding light as Elements and dust and gas and Quintessence were hurled outward in tendrils of swirling, reaching radiance.
“Glorious!” the ShopKeeper cried. “Glorious!”
He knew that this Star’s end was truly a beginning. New Stars would be born in the nebula being created. Elements that could be created no other way were now in the Universe. And the Star’s Quintessence—it would continue, and it would be used again too, perhaps even on the tiny planet he now called home.
The ShopKeeper gave the explosion site one last, longing look. Then he moved the quintescope down, down below the light and the debris, down where the Universe was still dark and undisturbed.
He moved the quintescope down until he found what he was looking for: the young copper Star, falling, falling, falling.
“Here comes the Starling.”