“Captain Orah and the Heart of Nebulon”

The stars opened for Orah the moment she asked.

She stood atop a tower shaped like a tuning fork in the city of Veloria, her coat made of woven aurora, her ship waiting above like a patient beast. In her old life, she had dreamed of space. But Earth never gave her the wings. The wars, the bills, the body — they all kept her grounded.

Here, the Machine heard her longing.

The Azora — her starship — was born of that desire. Smooth as thought, shaped like an arrowhead made of obsidian and pearl. Its interface was emotional. You flew it not with hands, but with feeling.

When Orah sat in the pilot’s seat, her breath controlled the gravity, her joy powered the warp field, and her curiosity chose the destination.

Today, she chose Nebulon, the lost stellar orchid of the Magellanic fringe — a system said to be older than time’s first heartbeat.

---

The Azora tore open space like silk.

It did not need fuel. It needed only love.

Comets whispered greetings as she passed. Ghost planets watched her go by, humming ancient lullabies from their ice-crusted cores.

Within a day that felt like a sigh, she reached Nebulon.

It was exactly what the old legends promised — a star system blooming with translucent energy petals, surrounding a black sun that didn’t burn but sang. Each planet within the system spun in rhythm with the music.

Orah landed on a crystalline moon orbiting a giant gas planet shaped like a lotus.

There was no atmosphere, no gravity — but she didn’t need them. Her body responded to her soul’s will.

She stepped outside, and was greeted by an ethereal being — shaped like a jellyfish and a lion, its voice pure chord.

“Why have you come?” it asked without sound.

“To remember,” she said. “To remember what we lost. What we used to know.”

The being’s tendrils wrapped gently around her.

And it shared a memory.

Orah saw a time before Earth, before physicality — when souls were stars, and stars were thoughts, and galaxies were conversations shared between curious fragments of God.

She wept — not out of sorrow, but out of recognition. Oh, that’s right. I used to be that.

She hovered above the surface of the moon, and in her ship’s reflection, she saw not just a woman — but a being made of starlight, clothed in her old form like a costume worn lovingly.