2.01 - Lotuses of Pivot

[Transcript]Pivot sits down linear Y at the crux of Nadir and Apotheosis. The two galaxies' spiral arms snare each other in a bramble garden of star nurseries and primitive solar masses shepherded under the Geist Brumes. Chum of mine, Tod’rish Scar, chats over the entangled coms as we make our final approach to Pivot’s docking port. I check on “Ruthin” in the cargo bay. It was Zery’s idea to give ‘em a nickname. Tucked behind the compact Jeder Reef grain we’re dropping off, she’s still coiled around her chrysalis. Asleep. I grab the last of the grain, flip off the lights, and wonder if she dreams.The Pivot doesn’t bother tryin’ for a night cycle. The Far Orbit Station’s awash with all the nearby ambient star light. Legend says the place was built by refugees from the Great Anathema, but the hurus out in Yan will be the first to tell you that ain’t true.Pivot’s busy this visit, full of metabotanists from all over. Badacamsanese, Dexikai, Palidrophites, and Ugrians who I reckon would love to try to grow the Lotuses back on Memkin VIII. They’re all gathered on the observation deck to see the Vector Lotus effloresce out in the stellar nurseries. Hamark is never that interested and Zery is busy with her Dexekai sweetheart. So, alone, I put my four feet up on the cockpit console and lean back to enjoy the show.A nimbus see emerges from the Mythosphere shedding vestigial ethos albugo. Celestial velamen explode outward towards any humanoids within three lightyears. Communion established, scions of shimmering green grow outward, coiling around the young stars as the lotus quickly flowers, its petals hundreds of astronomical units wide.I watch the astrophilous process but freeze as a long, skeletal spine moves in my peripheral vision. The cabin fills with a soft mossy luminance as Ruthin undulates her thousands of eyes around to look out the view port. I expect an attack, physical, psychic, metacausal, something. But she just looks into the stars as the Geist Brumes prune the Vector Lotuses.She's back in the hold now, wrapped around that chrysalis again. Zery doesn’t know but Harmark can see I’m shaken. I blame it on the Lotuses, still not sure what I just saw or maybe how lucky I am to be alive.