The second message was sent. The long conversation across the void was over. And now, there was only the waiting.
But this was a different kind of waiting. It was not the anxious, uncertain vigil of their past. It was a calm and joyful anticipation, the feeling of a family waiting for the return of a long-lost relative.
They did not know how they would come. They did not know when. But they knew they would. The two civilizations, which had touched and transformed each other across the vast and empty darkness, were finally going to meet.
The arrival came, as it always does, in a way they had not expected. There was no ship, no grand descent from the heavens. There was only a change.
It started in the music, a new and impossibly beautiful harmony that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It spread to the light, a new and softer glow that suffused the world with a gentle and loving radiance. It filled their minds, a new and profound sense of peace, of belonging, of a final and joyful homecoming.
The other civilization had not come to them. They had become a part of them. The long dialogue had been a process of convergence, of two streams of consciousness slowly, and then finally, merging into a single, and unimaginable, river.
The First Arrival was not a meeting. It was a union. It was the end of their separateness, the end of their long and lonely journey. They were no longer a single civilization, reaching out to the darkness. They were a part of a larger, and more beautiful, song. And the universe, which had once been a place of silent and empty spaces, was now, and forever, a home. The story of their becoming was over. A new story, the story of their being, was about to begin.