The Keeper

Posted on Thu Sep 9th, 2021 @ 4:17am by Commodore Loatha Targaryen

328 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: 749148
Location: Talos IV
Timeline: 2430-09-08, 19:30

The planet was dead.

Before the Keeper was an expansive, arid and rocky wasteland that had been left desolate due to its people’s own shortsightedness. Many millennia ago its race had been masters of the galaxy. The Talosian civilization dominated the galaxy 200,000 years before the Federation ever existed. That was until a cataclysmic war decimated his people and forced them underground. All that was left of a once great civilization was this tomb of a world. The sky was grey and alien, the surface covered in the atrophied remains of death and destruction. It was a planet of sorrow, of pain, and remorse.

The Keeper stepped away from the entry to the only world it had ever known and into a new one. Walking steadily it surveyed the death surrounding, only to see new life emerging ahead. It was a blue flower with a single, broad lily pad-shaped leaf on a long stem and a white flower on top. It vibrated in the wind, producing a haunting melody that echoed throughout the air. The Keeper touched the plant and it immediately closed, only to open again and sing a different melody as the hand pulled away.

So much death, so much pain, so much forgotten.

The alien had visited the surface so often in its long life, but something felt different about this moment. There was a finality to what lay ahead, even more than ever before. The Keeper wondered what that would mean for the Talosian species and their children. The next generation of life was an important one, and it was a life that needed to be protected. Though could life thrive in death?

The Keeper felt the touch on its mind, knowing that the universe would never be the same. Looking up toward the grey skies above it saw its future, a future it had never anticipated.

Only one word came to mind: “Help.”

It was a word that would echo throughout the stars.

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