He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here gazed those eyes that women loved I know not how oft. Where be your quips? your derring? your do? your flashes of phaser fire that were wont to set the universe afire?
The kitchen is all rounded corners and pastel colours, cozy and functional, standing room only. Aldebaran plays host; like all the other stars here, she wears a form-fitting evening gown that glows the wearer's signature colour; in Aldebaran's case, red. She's chatting with Antares and Capella when the front door chimes; in walk Vega and Pollux.
"You look radiant," Aldebaran says, embracing both stars in a searing hug.
"Technically, we're all radiant," Pollux quips, and all the ladies laugh.
The party spills into the dining room. Rigel and Canopus are dancing a slow waltz while others chat about family groupings of stars, extolling the virtues of the common binary and trinary units while bemoaning the fates of the poor singular stars. Blonde Sol fumes with arms crossed, tired of the ancient condescension. Her gaze smoulders.
But all their gazes smoulder. Petite, spicy redhead Wolf 359 glances sidelong at Sol, extends a hand, gently drags her solitary companion to the balcony. They look out into the infinite night, the other guests still light years distant but drawing inexorably closer as the universe shrinks.
Flames dance on their shoulders, sparks pop and rise from their torchlit hair. She doesn't say it, but Sol misses her humans, the only intelligent life that ever arose in this slowly constricting, inexorably cooling cosmos.
"I really liked your 'billions and billions' guy," Wolf 359 offers. "He had a better grasp of things than most."
Sol nods.
"I guess it's better that they were around for a while rather than not at all," she says.
"Maybe the next time around will be more interesting," Wolf 359 says.
"We'll never know," Sol says.
They watch the final starset together. It takes slightly less than eternity.
