There wasn’t a glimmer of light nor a flicker of color. I couldn’t even feel my heart beating inside my chest. I felt disconnected. Numb. Empty.

There was nothing. I was nothing.

And then, there was something.

I couldn’t see it, not exactly-I had no sense of smell, taste, touch, or sight. But I knew something- no, someone was there with me. I felt it.

I felt curious.

The feelings grew stronger until I saw and felt the colors and the warmth of a person, though I still couldn’t see the colors with my eyes or feel their heat brush my skin.

The person was curious. She-he-they were….fallen stars. Collapsing in on themselves, so far from home. I could see her his their colors shift and change, unable to linger as one too long. They were a quick fix, not meant to last.

They did not speak. They didn’t have to.

Another one? I knew they wondered. Part of me wondered how I knew. Part of me already knew. That same piece of me also knew they were a constellation of collapsing stars, desperately trying to keep from losing more stardust.

I felt them wonder if I was looking for collapsing stars, for fragments, like the other one was.

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A new presence, a flame, interrupted before I could wonder who the other one was. Not that it mattered. I knew in the same manner I’d felt and known everything else in this place.

I didn’t wonder about the flame because I knew him too.

A vision came to me then.

There was a stunning galaxy of twinkling stars, each star unique and shining brightly in the night sky. A terrible and hungry shadow stalked at the edges of the universe, hungering for their radiant light. The shadow swelled, and a tide of darkness crashed over the stars, shattering them. Their lights splintered and scattered, golden dust flying every which way. The terrible and hungry shadow grew angry at their destruction, having intended to devour and not destroy them. In a fit of rage, he stalked the universe, eating each speckle of stardust he found. With each tiny glimmer of light it consumed, the darkness only grew more terrible, more hungry. The darkness looked at me and smiled.

The vision shifted, and images of places and people I knew bombarded me. My senses were filled with green forests, strange cities, islands, neon cities, dark spires, a crystal forest, the stars, and so many faces. I saw the strings of fate which bound me to them, invisible hands tugging me along.

And then the vision ended, and the cloaked figure, the flame, returned. He hugged me, and I felt his determination, confidence, and scars, both physical and mental.

I knew what he had come to say and the gift he’d come to deliver. He said it anyway.

You’re stronger than you think. Physical strength isn’t the only strength that matters; a lack of it doesn’t make you weak.

You won’t be able to save them all. You need to try anyway. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.

The cloaked figure broke the hug, then pulled from his cloak pocket a pair of simple ruby earrings which were inlet in gold. He grabbed my hand and gently pressed the warm earrings into my palm, curling my fingers around them.

If you only remember one thing when you wake up, remember this: these will protect you. Don’t ever take them off.

When I wake up?

Oh. Right. This is a dream. Some part of me had known that, too, in the same manner all things are known in dreams.

And then, with a pinch of pain in my ears, I was awake, and the dream, like all dreams, faded from memory.