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It was time, she was nearing the end of her life. When she would collapse and shrivel and be regrown and reborn.

When Tunie the Course would become Tunie the Ship anew.

Her present-future was growing ever closer, the narrowing and winnowing of the threads and possibilities of herself were already so much less than the time of her birth. When the impulse of her drives had pushed the potentialities of the future ever harder and harder upon her eyes and ganglion. Crushing the perception of the body while blooming all that could be.

She was in the immutable now just arcing past the outer wefts and corrosively bright and burning periphery of the star. Lashing and having lashed and will be lashed by the tongues of the tightly curled and whorled outer symbiotes and radiation.

The most visible, diffuse and least dangerous of the solar ecosystem splattered and burned the capabilities of the f’teropods and tightly and utterly constrained what futures could ever have been part of her.

This had been and always was and would be for a short tightly bound segment of her body as a course.

Right before the endless precipice of now crushed those last tight roots down into one.

But turning forward to her wide fluffy branches of future there was another narrowing. It was just past in the adjacent stellar volume. A hollow of all but abandoned traffic. Where only wilderness beasts provided the sparsest of flight paths and all signals and warnings of passage had to be taken as all but worthless.

Wilderness where she must give every single high velocity source and massive object the full halo of its potential futures under all manner of possible acceleration.

But she wove and weaved and twisted herself through the futures of possible ambush and impact and snare.

There was no possible path that she would collapse herself into that could not be intercepted by danger.

A tangled wild fierceness dominated in the remaining hollow of her life where she touched and extrapolated the spread of her possible courses. It was without civil agreements or traffic law. There was no signal that could be certain as every single one was being conveyed by savage and potentially duplicitous beasts.

Worse yet this hollow was closed off from the usual trade lanes, none but crew and Tunie as ship or course knew the hidden cleft and all others assumed the reef walls were closed to impassibility.

So even the wilderness creatures were short sighted and short traveling. No feral star gliders here to provide even the noble savagery of honest signaling.

Only the slow crawling vermin that riddled every closed off place for safety from greater beasts and larger threats.

And compounding the feral nature of the hollow that would end Tunie the course’s life was its proximity to the true untamed wilderness of the forest.

As her drive finally caught and dragged her back down to the speed of her soon to be ship self she would be coasting into the weft and weave of branches. Threading and sliding between the almost but not quite sealed strata of reef wall.

Her descendant self would be closed in, without room to leap to the full potential of speed that was her birth right. Unable to afford to birth a new course of Tunie.

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She would be trapped in the tight close in confines of the forest’s abyssal canopy.

Hidden from the light of every star. Where the things unknown breached and lurked from the even deeper and stranger solid layers of the reef walls.

Hidden predatory monsters and terrible threats abounded and no port friendly to Tunie or slow caravan would dare venture for fear of predation or starvation in the black caverns.

But Tunie and her clever crew knew a path, and more so they knew a hidden port, secreted away by their allies long passed. Nurtured and fed on hidden trade routes by the machinations of Tunie and Crew’s own home mother port.

A bastion of civilization hidden within the depths of utter wilderness that could turn a harrowing and worthless risk to a rich and fattening stop.

Tunie the Course remembered her predecessors and the feasts they had of delectable wild grist from this port.

As she felt her span used up, every potentiality of future vetted and known, Tunie the ship began to assert and grow herself. Her perceptions rising up out of her foundations.

Sapping and draining away the thought and intense focus that fed Tunie the Course’s very life and existence.

She did not fault herself for this, her Ship self was never bothered by the death and resurrection that she herself necessitated. And their memories were passed between each generation and death like deep treasured heirlooms.

Tunie the Course shared the all encompassing and overwhelming expanse of existence as a tapestry of futures. Tunie the Ship shared the deep close intimate touch of brushies and the strange swaddled together singularity of a present.

And of course time and conversations with the Crew.

No Tunie the Course had ever been able to properly speak with their crews. That was not something they could ever have.

But even though none had ever spoken to them Tunie the Course agreed with all of her forebearers that she loved the crew.

And bequeathed this sentiment to her daughter Tunie the Ship to treasure and appreciate alongside the vista of the reef and the joy of leaping as close to light as any living creature could conceivably reach.

Tunie the course was at peace now in her future bushels. Ever narrowing strands and thinning potentials making her feel her senses fading.

As her body winnowed into a single strand.

And then she was Tunie the ship. Preparing to ruffle her feathers and begin braking with her f’teropods against the turbulence of the Aether.

Her feathers were sore and sharply ionized with sparking currents leaving her feeling fizzy and clean.

She began turning what powers of observation she could to her internals to check on her treasured crew and the friend who was a passenger.

She turned her eyes out to look for threats that might yet even now surprise her planned course and motion.

But her attention was far reduced now that she was preparing to slow down from the limits of her speed.

Ready to drag herself back into station with the rest of the reef around her.

She pinged her crew with the usual warning to watch out as the direction of internal acceleration was going to flip soon.

Tunie was very considerate.