Her Scales Shine Like Music

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Humble ice crystals high in the atmosphere often enrich sunsets on this cold world to glory. Mid-twilight, the sky shatters into opalescent shards, painting spectral pastels onto each ripple and wavelet of the vast lake near my shelter.

A strange lake it is: barely salty enough and in just enough constant motion to keep from freezing over. No more than a child’s stride inward from its smooth rim, the edge drops precipitously to a depth of over four kilometers. So sayeth Artist, High King of Scanning and Analysis on Stardancer, the twistship that abandoned me here for my unwanted tour as sentry, placeholder, and legal Vigilant.

Artist suspects the lake is artificial, created perhaps a million years ago. I can’t decide if I want him to be right. It both frightens and inspires me to imagine a species with such grandiose engineering powers. And where are they now?

Pale hexagons, magnified snowflake ghosts, appear on the fine sand around me, heralds of the falling temperature. The air carries a sharper bite.

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