What Are Stars, Anyway? by Jordan Hirsch
For Elizabeth. For Vicky.
Naurel stepped out onto her balcony into the dark and waited for her eyes to adjust, wondering how many more times she’d be able to do so. It took longer than it used to; her eyes were old and always tired these days. Then again, that could be said for the rest of her as well.
But recent days had been different. Her mind lagged; she was easily distracted. When asked a question, Naurel would search, wading through a blankness between her thoughts that hadn’t been there before. Less and less, she’d find what she was looking for.
Looking up at the pitch-black sky, it was no longer the inky sheet it had been moments before. Instead it was filled with millions of almost-white pinpricks: stars and planets and satellites and nebulae.
When she was a little girl, Naurel used to try to count the millions of white dots, but she’d never succeeded. Now as an old woman, however, if her suspicions were correct, she’d know exactly how many were out there quite soon.
#
Soon, yes, she needed to leave soon.
Naurel checked her bag, making sure she had what she needed; she wasn’t sure how long she’d be there, and just like the rest of her 217 years, she wanted to be prepared.
Her bag contained three changes of comfortable clothing, two of her favorite books, and a holodisk that had photos and videos of her three children, ten grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren, countless great-greats, and so on. Naurel had known exactly how many of those there were at one time, but her greats and great-greats kept having babies.
“Mom?” Naurel’s son had stepped into the room. “You ready to go?”
Checking her bag one more time, Naurel followed Jasleil out the door.
Her common room was spotless and empty. Naurel had decided when she’d made the appointment to not have any sort of big to-do. The past week, she’d been able to spend time with those she wished and connect with family. That had seemed better than some party where she ate too much cake and fumbled over names.
The only one who was going to see her off today was Jasleil. Her oldest. Her favorite. You weren’t supposed to have favorite children, but Naurel surely did. It’d been hard to say goodbye to Cassia and Gui the day before. Hard to not see their faces as they’d looked years ago: line-free, beaming, and usually some sort of sticky.
Cassia’s nearly white eyebrows, always knotted so hard in concentration over some puzzle when she was younger, had creased together right before they’d embraced, and Naurel’s thumb had longed to smooth them out, soft and feathery, like she’d do when little Cassia would drift off to sleep. Instead, they’d held each for a few moments, and Cassia had whispered something Naurel couldn’t quite remember now.
Constantly in a hurry, Gui had inched toward the door almost from the time he’d arrived. He’d always been underfoot until he was old enough to be out the door. Naurel wished she could scoop him up into her arms again, planting kisses on his sun-darkened cheeks, lips smacking loudly to drown out his protests. Gui was much too big for that now, but when Naurel had edged up on tiptoes, he’d lowered his cheek to her lips before making some excuse to leave, like it was any other goodbye.
That had been yesterday. Today it was only Jasleil who loaded her modest bag into the transport in her last hour outside the Ascensionary.
#
Their ride was mostly silent, Jasleil deep in thought and Naurel hardly thinking. She felt even thinner somehow, and when it came time for Jasleil to leave, having checked her in for her flight, Naurel’s heart ached for the words she didn’t have for him. If this had only been a few days earlier, even a few hours sooner, she would have been able to give a proper farewell to her son.
So instead, she did what words couldn’t. She pulled Jasleil–head and shoulders taller than she was–into an embrace, wrapping her stiff arms around his torso and resting her weathered cheek on his chest. They stood like that for a long time, and even if her mind couldn’t, her arms remembered. Jasleil’s Commitment day with his partner, hugging Naurel close as he cried from joy. Naurel draping her arm across his shoulder as he sat with his own firstborn in his arms, pride filling the whole room. Jasleil scooping Naurel up and carrying her to the couch, where she lay and wept herself empty after the commissioner had brought news of his father’s death 22 years prior.
“I love you, Jasleil,” Naurel was finally able to say.
“I love you, too, Mom. Thanks for letting me come with you today.”
All Naurel could do was nod as she pulled away and turned toward the attendant waiting for her.
“Are you ready?” they asked.
Naurel nodded again. She began her slow walk to the doorway and didn’t hear what the attendant said to Jasleil. She barely remembered Jasleil had been there at all.
#
“Excuse me?” Naurel didn’t know how long the technician had been speaking to her.
The tech’s smile was gentle and understanding. “You’re ready; your body has been moving toward this moment since it first came into being. Do you remember our conversations about what it will feel like when you Ascend?”
“Yes.”
The tech heard the hesitation in Naurel’s voice, so she went ahead and explained it all again.
But Naurel couldn’t concentrate, surrounded by her meager possessions in this temporary room. Through the glass ceiling of the Ascensionary, towering over the rest of the city, a few stars were trying to make themselves known, and Naurel fought to remember their names as the technician’s voice droned on in the background.
#
Naurel jolted awake. She’d been dreaming–or had she? Any memory of any dream had floated away, no longer within her grasp. What had woken her? After a few groggy moments, Naurel noticed that the ceiling above her was silently opening inch by inch, revealing a sky full of stars.
This must be it.
They’d told her that this was going to happen once her body was in its last corporeal moments. Even with this foreknowledge, uncertainty gnawed a pit in Naurel’s stomach but not for long. The obsidian sky, somehow seeming so much closer at this altitude, invited her in.
She thought of Roggir and her children and her friends–especially those that had Ascended before her. Roggir wouldn’t be up there waiting for her, and neither would her sweet granddaughter that had been lost too soon, betrayed by her own cells. But there were other loved ones that would be. Her parents, her sister, her best friend Esme. She wouldn’t be alone, starting over in the vastness of space. Though it stretched on infinitely, the expanse was not void, but abundant. So many before her had Ascended when their time had come.
Naurel began slipping away. She’d been warned time and time again not to fight it, and she didn’t want to now that the time had come. Her body knew what it was doing; they’d just brought her closer to ease the transition. What was space, anyway, but an extension of where her first life had already been lived?
She was a million tiny pieces, and each one was leaving this honored place with a purpose to go elsewhere. Her eyes became comets, her bones became planets, her teeth made their way to the rings of a nearby satellite. All drifting from her being to elsewhere, surrendering everything that she’d been gifted 217 years ago.
But her energy–her soul, her being, her spirit: the lightness started in her chest, and she became light itself, giving energy to a star thousands of lightyears away.
Naurel, as all of the people before her who had lived to the age of Ascension, became fuel for a star, and over time–thousands of years, given light’s traveling speed–she would make her way back to her first home that she loved, shining on whatever was still there. It would not be her garden, but she would feed it. It would not be her children, but she would kiss their cheeks with her light and warmth.
Ascending to her next life, the next iteration, Naurel would pass on what generations of those who’d Ascended before had given her. She, too, would shine in the onyx sea that ceilinged worlds, giving what she could to those who came next.
For what are stars, anyway, but bringers of life?
—
Jordan Hirsch writes speculative fiction and poetry in Saint Paul, MN, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared with Daily Science Fiction, Apparition Literary Magazine, and other venues. Find her on Twitter: @jordanrhirsch.
