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Prelude
The wanderer slipped across space and time, sailing an ocean of darkness in which stars hung like lanternfish. Watchful eyes might have observed it shimmering out of focus, melting and recrystallizing--here now, gone now, always somehow creeping ahead of where the eye would look for it next. Mostly, though, it moved unnoticed. Space was vast, and life here was stretched thin, scattered among the light-years.
The wanderer, however, was not alone. Connections to other worlds sparkled and danced with life, despite distance, despite time. Tachyons spun out from its core at speeds close to infinite, carrying news, or greetings, or songs. A new world lay ahead, a world which they could not yet see, but could feel, a world from which a response had finally been aroused. Whether someone had deciphered their songs, or merely echoed with one of their own, was unclear. What mattered was the existence of the answer and its welcoming tone.
Time passed, and a host of new songs was spun. As the wanderer drew nearer, a messenger was observed departing from the destination world. It rose out of its sun's gravity well, climbing toward the wanderer, spouting a thin but energetic flame as it crossed the gulf.
Far outside the orbits of even the dimmest and loneliest of the planets of this star, the two bodies approached one another. One moved in a slow and deliberate curve, the other in a shimmering ripple--drawn together by mutual curiosity and the offering of a song.
