Omega watched the line of lights twinkling through space. They reminded her of fireflies. Hovering over the fields after a heavy rain. When water still sat in little pools and flowed in the short lived falls before Terra and the plants growing upon her plate could finish absorbing them.

The voice of the window murmured softly. Describing the scene, elaborating on the lives of the people and beasts of burden that lived generations moving along the inner surface of the stellar volume.

“The trade caravans of the chaparral fill every safe corridor between the many polity and sedentary ecosystems within it. Vast threads of migratory merchants and their supporting symbiotes and escorts.”

The view swam closer, expanding and bringing it all closer and closer.

What had at first been a sparse punctuation of lights in a line began to grow more distinct. The individual lights breaking up into threads and clumps of density. The darkness between becoming clear to not be empty, merely filled with more sparse and less luminous travelers.

“Any given sampling of a migratory path of the trade caravans is overflowing with biodiversity. Species from all over the stellar hollow and beyond can be found either contributing to the merchant population, acting as beasts of burden or being carried as cargo.”

The shimmering lights and shapes finally bloomed from a river to a cloud of objects. Shapes, creatures, beings, vessels, entire structures, things that honestly looked as much like buildings as anything else.

[https://i.imgur.com/DnlZpFq.png]

“Within the chaparral however this is all the more true. So close to true wilderness and equally distant from the protections of Redweed the merchant migrations must see to their own survival more often than not.”

Shapes lurked and shifted in the crevices of the reef in the distance, great heaving forms the size of mountains. But streaking missiles shooting past to explode and sudden searing flashes of light turned away whatever passed for interest or curiosity in the behemoths.

“As such the niche of caravan protectors opens up considerably in this near wilderness. Giving opportunity for far more energy demanding escorts to either join the migration or act as stationary sentries on those routes which pass their territory.”

The view moved back and along the line of the caravans. It was a river of life, of civilization, of people. Smaller individuals were moving through the structures/components. Merging and splitting from each other. Along the sides of the path taken by the vessels there loomed shapes. Sometimes they almost resembled something human made, vast and immense but sensibly along the lines of a fortress or structure.

Other times what stood watch was clearly alive, a singular living animal. A breathing, shifting mass that gave her vertigo to look too intently upon.

Sometimes the guardians were alike, other times wholly different. Paths of light would split off from the caravan in either case, bringing some bribe or tithe to them.

Another feature she noticed recurring was seemingly woven or fibrous materials, that looked knitted from yarn, like Aleph’s collection of awful green sweaters. Something incongruously familiar and domestically terran like.

In the background other shapes fluttered, golden sparks and red hot coals spinning into the void. She saw a thing taller than mountains shift to evaluate the event.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She shared a moment of contemplation with the beast that older civilizations on her home would have felt the need to name as a god.

Then when the event apparently failed to show signs of being a threat the thing turned away and resumed peering out over the reef.

She considered the light of cities flowing past her eye. No not cities, entire worlds swam by in that caravan. In this one narrow thread of a web that she knew was spread out over the entire stellar volume.

This was considered on the border of uncivilized wilderness for the Reef. And she did not have to do the maths to understand her entire civilization was a drop in its ocean.

There were by best estimate just shy of two billion terrans on her home when they left.

That could have easily been strung along and lost in just one trade route below her.

That train of thought got interrupted when the fluttering from before turned into a vast cascade of golden light that took her breath away.

It was rising like clouds from over a curving wrinkled ‘hill’ of reef structure from her current vantage. But the window dutifully swept out and around to show her.

She could not call them anything but trees. Even though their boughs were longer then all of terra.

“The Seeding spore of the Auricandia are a marvelous occurrence. Spurred on by the sign of enriching debris from the Mountain Ram mating display they will disperse their seeds on reflective metal enriched winged pods. Catching up the nutriment and solar winds available and then riding the buffeting light of this star to elsewhere in the hollow or beyond.”

It was golden mist and clouds and sweeping aurora currents. Arcs of lightning shooting between it and then moving in a flocking swirl that all but overwhelmed. She had seen some of the void birds sweep through the sky of Terra once, numbers that momentarily blotted out the sun on half the sun disk.

This was like the inverse. Reflective and enhancing the light so that everything across the hollow was swept with lazy splashes of gold. In the most distant edges of the hollow the color long in coming. She counted the minutes in her head to see the shift in hue reach the most distance reef walls as the sight was spooled up and sent over the choir for Quarti and Aleph to appreciate. Some distant part of her mind noted that it was probably literal gold, due to its reflective properties.

Thirty Seven minutes later she caught the wave of golden highlights dance on the most distant reef structures.

The ones that were almost washed out from having to look past the star to see directly.

Omega sat and contemplated the window and the scales involved.

The reef was full, it was bustling and bristling with life in every corner, every meter of it. Covering expanses of space so vast that light lazily sauntered over its foothills. In a way that she could WATCH it happen.

She shook herself and walked over to the meditation pod. Sending Quarti a quick ping over choir to know she was taking up the shift for her.

Omega needed time to think and deal with something smaller and more familiar. To tend and check on the health and stability of their cargo of souls.

Let the vast overwhelming expanse of the Reef be hidden by her dark cozy pod.

Sometimes it was just too much.