Bright had been dreaming.
It did not know what dreaming was, exactly—in fact found the notion peculiar. Yet surely that was what it had been doing. Imagining. How could something live within a star? Except the star?
Bright had been dreaming.
It had dreamed that others had come to it, passed through it like things of the great darkness, things with perhaps thought but not soul. It had all happened so quickly, Bright could hardly judge, except that for a flicker of an instant, far less than the time for a flare to be cast into the dark, Bright had felt the presence of something other than itself.
In itself.
Something other than star.
There were others, to be sure. There was Near, and there was Small; but though they sang a little and comforted Bright against the dark, they did not think, as Bright thought. There were still others in the beyond, but they were
far
and tiny
and not so bright
as Bright
Several times now it had happened, the awareness of something strange. There was a tightness and a heat that was not right. Bright was old, and not without wisdom. Bright had known lives and Bright had known deaths. Of others, many others. Bright’s own death was perhaps closer than wish, nearer than hope. But still Bright sang, still it listened to the music from the others, from the stars.
Bright lived and knew. Knew what was real.
Knew what was not.
This thing, this feeling that it had touched others out of the night, touched them in the instant that they had fled, was a conjuring of the imagination.
Bright had been dreaming.