> Drawing of 23915L32 standing, with the Lièm Satellite in the sky behind them. One arm is curled with their palm facing them, their other arm outstretched in front of them. They wear a sports-like bra mostly obscured by their arm, which features a long, red glove, with an emblem on the left hand. They also wear a set of leggings, which a set of ribbons hang an emblem from. Their lengthy tail wraps down, with conical protrusions towards the end & mid-point. The tail ends in a clean, cylindrical cap with a dark circle in the center. The name of the character is scattered around the piece, one beneath an ambiguous 11 or 12 pointed star, & one above text reading, “Sever & find something new.” In the bottom corner, it continues, “How much to cut. How deep into the nocturnal, until you find “NEW”.”


***


Glittering bands of light entrapped every mass in the sky. Everything of halo, everything of aura, everything of presence. It soothed, but felt in the same way that entering an abandoned house you once resided in did. Something was missing, not just in the obvious sense that the stars were gone, & that the land was presumably spiraling through empty mass, & that said ether itself was inaccessible, cloaked in raw matter. They knew these things, but did not know that which felt missing. If they could, they would tweak the sky, over & over, adjusting things until it all felt just right. But they suspected that they wouldn’t be able to excavate what the feeling was, still. Perhaps they just desired to feel like this.

It became difficult to tell how long they lived. Once tens & tens of years pass, the single digit blurs, the tens blurs. Once hundreds pass, it becomes a fluid blur. How many times had they become reborn, & yet how this feeling had stuck with them for so long. Was this what their personhood was, at a base level? Was their entire being summed up as a suspicious eye to the sky? They didn’t know. It was time to head back inside, they dwelled out here for too long again.