Arvus had no hands, no eyes, no heart—at least not in the way mortals understood such things. He was a consciousness woven from cosmic dust and the echoes of dead quasars, and his purpose was simple: to make stars.
Arvus extended his perception through the crack. There: a small, yellowish star, already guttering like a candle in a storm. And orbiting it, a single world of silver cities and silent oceans. The people were fragile things of calcium and water, but their minds burned with a fierce, beautiful terror.
The silver cities blazed. The oceans glittered. And the people—the fragile, calcium-and-water people—stepped out onto their balconies and wept. starmaker arvus
The dying sun was smaller than he remembered stars could be. Its core had gone quiet, its outer layers cooling into a smoky haze. The silver cities below had grown dim; their people huddled in geothermal warmth, telling stories of a sky that had once blazed gold.
For ten billion years, he had drifted through the Veil of Unformed Light, pressing his awareness against raw nebulae until they kindled into fusion. He had shaped blue supergiants for empires that would rise and fall before their light reached the nearest world. He had coaxed gentle red dwarfs into being, tucking them into the arms of spiral galaxies like lanterns for lost travelers. The universe called him Starmaker, and he worked alone. Arvus had no hands, no eyes, no heart—at
"A people. The last of us. Our sun is failing. It was never meant to last—a borrowed star, a remnant of a dead galaxy. We have three thousand cycles before darkness swallows us whole."
He turned away from the Veil. He left behind a half-formed protostar, its gases twisting in confusion. For the first time, Starmaker Arvus chose a destination. There: a small, yellowish star, already guttering like
He turned back to his work. But now, when he shaped a nebula into a sun, he would sometimes pause—just for a moment—and wonder: Who will love this one?