You and I sat there, waiting by the grand fountain in the center of the festival grounds. You, with great anxiety, wringing your hands and tapping your leg to divert the idle stress. Me, with great composure and clarity, as I only had one part to play in the day's festivities.

Today was a big day, both for yourself, and for the agri-dome coalition as a whole. Even the fountain you sat by had been re-designed for the event, the old statue of Executor Avantus replaced by a trio of figures in hopeful and noble pose. It wasn't often that your little outpost was so close to a moment of such historical import, and the event had spurred you to action in more ways than one.

"Sorry to keep you waiting for so long!" You heard from nearby

And there she was, the source of your anxiety. Her dress was lavender and gold, and she wore a white begonia laced into her auburn hair. Her perfume smelled like apricots. She smiled and you blushed like the young lover you were. I smiled too, but you were too enraptured to notice.

You laughed at how blatantly he was staring at you, and extended slender hand for him to take.

"Come on! We shouldn't waste any more time before the pass!" You said to him.

He nodded wordlessly, mind overwhelmed, and took your outstretched hand. You led him towards the festival proper like a dog on a leash.

From behind your merchant's stand you watched the young lovers pass and chuckled to yourself. You remembered how you felt the first time you had courted a partner. Nostalgia washed over you and you allowed it, as it was a day for celebration after all.

"Mementos for the glorious day! Immortalize the passing over Dione with silver and gold!" You belted in their direction with your practiced call.

The lovers were briefly distracted and looked in your direction. The girl said something to the boy and rushed towards you, still leading the lovestruck fool by the hand.

"Interested in a memorial imprint?" You asked.

They agreed of course, pliable and eager as they were in their infatuated state. You paused and thought of what to prepare for them. You felt as if it should be something other than your typical pre-programmed designs sent by the parade tour organizers. Something special.

I leaned over and whispered into your ear an idea that fit your intent. The lovers didn't notice, lost in each other's gaze.

With the skill and precision gained through years of semblance engraving, you quickly transcribed the design, and the light-foundry made short work of the liquid goldvine you fed into its mouth.

With a flourish, the engraver presented the finished pieces to you, and your first reaction was confusion. The plates were not carved or intricately detailed like the others on display, but instead bore a simple design. It was one of pillars of varying height, broken by oblong shape in their center. You exchanged looks with your partner, and she too was unsure of what to make of it. Amused, I leaned over to you and told you of its meaning.

Your eyes lit up as I explained, recognizing the simple trick I had played. You laughed, a lilting sonorous tone, and the begonia's petals bounced in time with your laughter. You and your partner pocketed the plates, thanked the merchant, and went on your way to imbibe in as much revelry as you could before the main event.

Behind you, the merchant waved as you left with your prize, but his smile fell once your backs were turned. He fixated on the design still present in his light-foundry entry field, trying to discern the meaning. I laughed and quickly hurried you on, leaving the puzzle for him to solve on his own.

The festival was large and sprawling. The entirety of the agri-dome was in attendance, and even those normally too jaded for such an occasion saw fit to emerge from the habs and lurk in the fringes of the celebrations. There was so much to see and do and taste and feel that you were paralyzed by choice.

I whispered to you again.

If you're having trouble deciding where to start, why decide at all?

Your heart soared as the meaning of my words became clear, and you sprinted towards the nearest available source of entertainment.

You partook in the festival with a joy and eagerness so deep, even I was inspired. Bright dyed sucralose globes spun with suspended edible gold leaf, hand-knit kavat dolls with soft synthetic pelt, sensorium mantles of gold and glass, manufactured gravitational wells interweaving over cushioned play-space, rich meats stained with orange spice of the agri-domes, light-smoking lounges swirling with clouds of shared phosphorescence, photon weave dancing in patterns honoring the Executors and their benevolence, fortified plum-wine so deep it seemed as black as the space between stars, trinkets from far off moons ferried through secret markets to be sold as curiosity, new children's baubles from Corposium that blinked and hummed with unknown purpose, fresh fruits and vegetables from the agri-dome overstock trays, an injury sustained in your careless joy, a lover's kiss, the melange of emotions from discovering you had been made a cutpurse's mark, the thrill of furtively counting your stolen goods in darkened alley.

So many sensations and emotions unchecked. Unrestrained. You imbibed to excess, and the combined weight exceeded your limitations. Your stomachs expelled, eyes rolled back into your skulls, and world-blind you danced from the intoxication of overwhelming joy that broke the limits you were born to contain.

The fervor intensified, and you continued to dance in the cold light of stars filtered through agri-dome screens, obstructed only by the distant shadow passing silently between you and them in the void above.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

So joyous was the moment that you briefly forgot your age. You kicked and whirled, spinning and laughing as you danced across the grounds. You cast aside your walking cane and it clattered across the square. You felt like you were young again. Nostalgia washed through you once more.

But then your body could sustain your fancy no more. You had dutifully taken your mandated mineral supplements and participated in gravitational therapy for decades, but the measures available to you here, this far from the Lorist compound on Rhea, could only do so much. Your knees ground as bone upon bone, muscles unspun like string, and you were sent crashing to the floor.

You stopped dancing immediately to focus on this new distraction.

Weakly, the old woman lifted her head from her supine position.

"What...I...What's going on? Where is- what happened to- I can't-"

The weak cries from her pathetic form elicited your disgust, and the revelry came to a halt.

I clicked my tongue in irritation.

You walked over to the woman and leaned down to help, your Dax armor glinted in the fair lights still weaving the likenesses of Executors, apathetic to this momentary distraction. You shook off the pain and stood, legs twisted and broken.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! I should have been more careful!" You say, shaking to sustain your withered form even with assistance.

You unholstered your sidearm and placed the barrel beneath your chin. A single whisper round punched through your skull with the soft sound of rushing air.

Two-hundred and thirty eight years of memory was cast across the festival square in the wake of the whisper, glistening beneath the spinning lights. Blood ran from her nose like the water of the central fountain and her body fell once more, weightless and frail. The lights weaved still, apathetic as they were.

There was a brief moment of silence, punctuated only by the distant pulse of pre-recorded music sung over speakers throughout the festival grounds, and the gentle sound of water flowing from the fountain beneath the star-gazing trio of gold.

"Oh good, I thought she'd never leave!" You said, breaking the silence.

You laughed all at once, a lilting, sonorous tone. A hundred throats in harmony.

You resumed your dance, and the revelry continued. Smiling, you leaned over and grabbed your pistol, still loosely gripped in the hand of the dead woman.

The Dax re-holstered his weapon and stopped, his smile falling. Though hidden beneath his helm, his brow furrowed as he stared at the old woman's corpse. Her empty eyes stared into the dome-screens overhead. A thousand thoughts fought for focus in his head, and he stood motionless. Something screamed desperately within him, but it could not make itself heard.

"Everything all right?" You said, pausing briefly between desperate gulps of wine and mouthfuls of food. Mastication dribbled through your teeth and ran down your skin.

You turned away from the corpse and smiled. "Perfect!" You said, and joined the festivities once more.

For hours you danced. You danced and spun in the fountain square. You danced in the dining hall, choking on heaps of food shoveled ravenously into your mouths. You danced in the gravitational fields, droplets of blood suspended like constellations in their invisible grasp. You danced through the agri-dome production trays, crushing fruit and stem and rolling in the chemical fertilizers, relishing the burning on your skin. You danced through the market stalls, glass and metal flaying flesh and marking your passage with crimson graffiti upon the walls and floors. You danced motionless on the ground, eyes staring without seeing. Fixated on the revelry. The stars. On nothing at all.

You danced and danced. You danced alone.

Then suddenly you stopped.

"Oh no! It's almost time! It's almost time!" You said, and you looked towards the passing shadow between the stars.

I laughed. My part to play in the festival was at hand, but I had no reason to be nervous. What was about to happen was going to happen, thus, it was the same as if it already had.

In rapt silence you watched the passing shadow emerge from the field of stars as colony ship in stark detail between you and Saturn. Illuminated by the kaleidoscope of the ringed giant's face its crescent shape was in stunning relief, and you held your breath in anticipation.

The space around you distended. Festival warped and stretched across infinite distance as streaks of color and sense, pulled beyond recognition on spacetime thread. The agri-dome folded as tunnel, twisting inwards on itself like paper sheet, and you were catapulted across its length, landing in suspension within reach of the ship. Breathlessly you reached out to touch it.

"-All decks, all stations, stand by for reliquary field drill."

You heard the echoes across the near-distance, and with barely restrained excitement you mouthed the words as if you had heard them a thousand times before.

"-In ten...nine...eight..."

You shuddered with anticipation. Your skin began to itch, and tears ran down your face. Nostalgia washed over you and you joined the counting.

"-seven...six...five..."

I couldn't contain myself any longer. My fingers trembled as I counted down with you.

"-four...three...two..."

The space between you and the ship snapped like frayed cord and nothing flooded the empty between points, flinging you back screaming into the festival grounds.

Overhead, a flash of violent color erupted from the ship, and you howled with an animalistic fury that turned the fountain to ichor, ground to ash, food to rot, and walls to dust. The ship was gone, and the reverberations of its passing cascaded across the real between you and the space it once was. When the waves reached Dione, your cries resonated with their pulse and your final boundaries were broken.

I knew I couldn't just leave you like that. Unsatisfied. Unfinished.

So I did as I had promised you with the trick at the engraver's foundry. I carved the shape of it across the entire agri-dome, and it became.

Eventually the Dax came, of course, but no matter how hard we tried to reason with them they wouldn't listen. Too caught up in their battle sib's warsong to hear us, I suppose. Philistines.

And as you know, when the Dax reported on what they found, the Orokin ordered them to 'cleanse the blighted halls of fetid Dione with torrent of Void-fire.' The irony was clearly lost on them.

Dione was re-colonized after a decade, the Dax who carried out the deed were executed, and no record is kept of that wonderful day we shared.

But I still remember it. I keep it close to my heart, and with each pulse someone else feels a faint whisper. They dance like you did that day, and carve a bit more of that shape I shared. They carve it into the ground with their feet, or their food with their teeth.

And then I am there in that shape, and I reach out to them through the cracks. They take my hands and we dance together.

We dance, and dance, and dance.

and dance and dance and dance and dance and [https://i.imgur.com/xD0IzYP.png]