Trapped. Trapped in a timeless, unbreakable prison….just like the rest of his race. At least his prison is quiet. Quiet enough to think. Outside, the stars go out, constellation by constellation. He thinks of the ancient Greeks, who created the stories we still remember today, and the Romans, whose names we still associate with them. Orion. Ursa Major. Cassandra. Didn't he have a companion whose legend was reflected in the stars? What was her name again—Zoe, perhaps? Even as the stars vanish, he can see them spread out like a map.
The groups are artificial, after all. A red giant five hundred light-years away might be a dot in the same drawing as a white dwarf one-tenth the distance, forming a seamless image, though they were never aware of it, never meeting save in imagination.
Now everything outside is darkness. He thinks of Emres, a friend from Fi'cara, where the constellations are made of the dark places, not the stars. "Between places," Emres had called them. "Where your mind can travel forever and ever." But without stars to divide the darkness, even those constellations vanish.