The Uncharted Within

[Jazzi]

The Uncharted Within
T.Thorn

---

---

"What if...th...that's not a star?"
"Indeed, what if it wasn't."
Liquid crimson, hot and slick, trickled down the curves of her lips to trace a path down her chin. An iron tang spreads through her mouth. Her eyelids opened wide, brown pupils starting at the object. Luminescent amid the black. A single point amidst the darkness. With the throttle down, it continued to grow in her vision. As if it were coming to her. Growing in size. Filling her vision. Flooding her eyes with intensifying lumens. A pressure building behind her eyes. A thrumming ringing in her ears.
"What it could be, if it isn't?"
Dimly aware of how her body slumps as the flightseat catches her form, yet the sight beforeher remained. Expanding, catching fire, throwing out jets of superheated plasma into the void. Bearing down, Thallia no longer stares. The star before her is the one staring. Boring deep within her soul, her mind, searching. Burning. Her fingers. Her toes. Spreading from her extremities through her body. Like claws her hands clutch and dig into the armrests beneath her wrists. The soles of her boots shift and press into the metallic frame of the cockpit beneath the flightstick.
"How did they g...go about it... I ca...can't...what did they use..."
"I've always admired their manipulation of matter itself, like a woven blanket, threads finely tugged."
Her head throws back into the headrest, forehead pushing into the synth-leather material. An ear-piercing scream fills the cockpit, the crunch of the hull around her imploding in a sudden decompression.
"Thallia, are you alright?"
Darkness.

Serenity. The tickle of a westerly breeze upon her forehead. The crunch of fresh snow beneath her hands and knees as she picks herself up. The crest of mountains rising and falling. Clouds sailing through the open blue, their edges elusive and curled in unnatural arcs. 'Phffffhnnnnmmmmmmmmm' The demanding sound of a bellows from behind. Thallia turns. A sharp gasp from her lips. Eyes wide. Before her stood a myth. A lie. A figment of fancy... yet, impossibly, there it stood. Snow crunched beneath her footsteps as she strode towards the structure.

Anna?