The universe, the author, watched as the first of its beloved characters was sent on its final pilgrimage into the Sea of Questions. And for the first time since the dawn of creation, the author felt a pang of something akin to grief.
It had chosen not to intervene, to allow its characters the dignity of their own, unanswered story. But in that moment, watching the small vessel disappear into the silent darkness, the author felt the profound weight of its own, self-imposed distance. It was a loneliness that transcended the vastness of space, the loneliness of a creator who could watch, but not touch; who could love, but not comfort.
And so, the author wept.
The author’s tears were not made of water. They were made of starlight. A shower of shimmering, newborn stars fell upon the Sea of Questions, each one a tiny, brilliant spark of sorrow and of love. The stars did not provide an answer. They did not illuminate the mystery of death. They simply added their own, silent beauty to it.
The civilization of the Great Question, watching this unexpected meteor shower, did not interpret it as a divine sign or a message from on high. They saw it as another, beautiful and unanswerable question. They saw it as a new and poignant verse in the cosmic poem, a new and unexpected chord in the universal symphony.
They did not know that they were witnessing the tears of their creator. But they felt, in that moment, a profound and unspoken kinship with the universe. They felt that they were not alone in their questioning, that the cosmos itself was a fellow traveler in the great and beautiful mystery of existence. And in that shared, silent, and star-dusted moment of wonder, the story of the author and the story of the characters became, for a brief and beautiful instant, one and the same.