They gather in their thousands under the auspicious night. The heavens make no rotation, the stars affixed in place, diamonds trapped in obsidian. The breeze, untouched by sunlight for years, plunges through them, desperately clawing at their warm bodies but finding only thick furs and tight embraces.
An elder turns her nose to the sky. Even the wind is slowing, she thinks. The moon sits wearily on the horizon, stuck, unable to make her bright face full in the sky. The tides no longer venture onto the shores. The birds no longer flock across the land. The planets, those bright marbles, have not been seen for years.
It’s all slowing down. Entropy is reaching its final, silent, crescendo. All will resolve itself into ash and the ash will whisper their memory on a wind that will, one day, fall still, and all will be forgotten.
The gathered masses flinch back as a flash fills the sky. A shooting star scores across the blankness of night, leaving a burning afterimage in their startled eyes. It is gone before most of them can blink and yet, it leaves an impression that puts the crowd into awestruck contemplation. A burst of movement in a still universe.
That little rock, burning in the upper atmosphere, is now laden with a thousand renewed wishes. They fold themselves seamlessly into its aspect and are borne along its glittering odyssey into the slow cosmos.
Paddy Dobson
30th December 2020