What are the light-specks?

They're solidified droplets of condensed luminiferous aether, slowly radiating away the light that was trapped inside them when the aether collapsed. The aether used to fill the skies in the ancient days, reacting with phlogiston that flowed from beneath the earth to create light in all colours.

It was a happy time, by all surviving accounts. Happy, wasteful, and short.

The aether burned brightly, and it burned briefly. Briefly, at least, in comparison to the long ages of declining light, itself a mere eyeblink compared to the eternity of darkness that is to follow.

Dim and monochromatic, ever fading specks. The tail end of the era of light. Soon light and sight will exist only in memory. And memories are as short-lived as the creatures that carry them.

Can life thrive without light? Or will the countless coming generations live on in blind, mindless savagery?

It doesn't bear thinking about.

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wow look at this THING
https://tapas.io/episode/2345322