The seers watched the coldstar’s approach, seasons before it struck.
“Will we survive, elder?” we asked.
The seers chose truth over the comfort of false hope. “No, beloved. When the coldstar strikes, it will turn us into bones, sent unto our ancestors’ embrace.”
Many of us wailed in distress. Some of us sought darker caves or deeper seas, hoping for shelter in the wrathful wake of the coldstar. Others of us, thinking of the unhatched eggs who would never see the dawn, began to plan.
“The coldstars are not unique,” the eldest seer told us.
We gathered around the clear pools, mud cool between our claws. We basked in the shade of great trees; if we looked past the sun, we could see the glow of our doom approaching.
“So they will come again?”
“Yes,” the eldest seer said, their great neck drooped low. “In dreams I see the future peoples of this land. They are not like us; they have no feathers or claws. They build nests as tall as the sky. They look to the stars, wishing to fly, even though they have no wings.”
“What do we care about these mythic beings of future days?” some of us demanded. “They are not us! They do not care! They cannot help us!”
“No,” others of us replies, understanding the eldest seer’s words. “But when the coldstars come again, we might give those-who-come-after a chance of life.”
“How?” we cried, “when we cannot save ourselves?”
“Think of the ancestors,” the eldest seer said. “Of how their spirits guide us.”
“The ancestors won’t protect us—”
“We will become protectors,” the eldest seer said, and we were quiet as we considered.
In our inevitable deaths, we would become more. Our combined wills, united, would transform us into a being unlike any we could imagine.
So we gathered, the thousand of us who stayed, and we pressed ourselves together, flank-to-flank, claws linked, our heads tilted skyward. We formed the largest circle, all of us from different eggs, meat-eater and plant-eater alike, standing unmoved in the face of the coldstar’s approach. For seven days we stood there, enduring, and slowly, we felt our spirits fitting together like teeth.
Brighter and hotter, the coldstar loomed above us. We raised our voices in defiance, shouting into the future.
And then death.
It is hard to explain what we felt. There was pain and then a lightness: as if we all flew, even those of us without wings. We rose, our spirits joined in a being that has no meat, no breath, no warmth. This new existence frightened us. We flailed and storms rose in our wake, carried along the atmosphere.
We marvelled, then, looking down at the world that had only memories of our bones. We were in the sky where the coldstar had originated. Now we, not the coldstar, hovered over the aging world.
The land hatched new life: the tree-dwellers who shaped themselves over generations into you. You, with your glistening nests that touch the sky, with your crafted wings that carry you nearly to the void. You look into the night and you wonder at all the stars. You dream of laying your own eggs on the moon, letting your younglings flourish on worlds far from where you nest.
And as our eldest seer foretold, the coldstars come again. They hurtle through the emptiness, seeking your heat, jealous of your life. You call them meteors; you watch them and you sing their names in your multitude of voices.
You know, for you have studied our deaths, that if a coldstar licks up your heat, your species will perish.
You do not know that we protect you. Yet we have, and we will.
When the coldstars careen through the void toward you, we bare our teeth and spread our great wings. We deflect these beasts of ice and stone. They wound us, but they cannot kill us again. We are beyond death.
We are your guardians; we watch over you, even with all your bloodshed and your pain, and we guard our home and yours from another extinction.
Perhaps, in time, your gilded eyes will see us as we are. When you do, we wonder, will you fear us and seek to dispel us? Or will you embrace us as you do the stars?
We are here, and here we stay, guardians of this world until time eats the last coldstar and we can rest.