[b]Somewhere in space[/b]

Anai’a Lilili Kirrisesh held its court at the center of the Ivrosi Remnant. It was here, carefully held in place by a lattice of their progeny, that the eldest and very youngest of sprites were maintained, carefully nurtured by the rest of the colony. 

Anai’a certainly fit that bill – its whisper-thin carbon mantle, its edges nearly nonexistent from millennia of erosion by the sun, spread out around it nearly a meter in diameter. Its body was especially large, as well, being nearly twelve centimeters long and vaguely egg-shaped. Several dozen newly-sprouted sprites clung inside the inner folds of the elder’s mantle, their underdeveloped grippers not yet strong enough to hold them into the colony’s formation. It was clear this sprite had been around for an absurdly long time.

Anai’a itself could remember precisely when it was sprouted. 2567 IE, according to the calendar of the Ivrosans. It so clearly remembered the giggling, squealing Ivrosan child who had gently detached it from its parent’s spore depositor and cradled it in its tentac¬les. At the time Anai’a had not understood the language, but eventually it understood those sounds to be its name. “Lilili”. A silly sound, perhaps, but one that it still treasured and carried with it after all these hundreds of millennia. Lai had been a good caretaker – had been gentle, and sweet, and did not object to sharing her memories with its new spriteling.

Anai’a had been by Lai’s side as the Ivrosan child had grown into an adult, and had helped its mistress raise her own family, and remained loyal to the family even after her mistress Lai had gone on to the void. She became their governess – it was not uncommon, in Ivrosan society, for those of affluent enough means to have acquired a spriteling (the infants were viewed as a sort of an exotic pet, though they were wary of the adults for the neurotoxin that could have at any point been injected into their bodies if the sprite should have ever gotten tired of them) and kept it loyal to the family, to maintain them after their initial owner’s passing as a sort of “governess” for the children and grandchildren and all the progeny. 

The elder stretched its tentacles, shivering slightly as it brought itself back to the present at the touch of one of its many, many offspring. It’s an arduous task, to sift through so many memories to return to the present, but the offspring are usually patient, reverent to their elder’s plight. This one is tugging excitedly, however, and Anai’a blearily struggles to open the communication with it, barely having a moment to collect itself before frantic streams of raw visual data are dumped into its head. The foremost edge of the sail has encountered relatively high concentrations of water molecules, and the concentrations are increasing. This means they must be entering near the orbit of a planet with liquid water.

There is more news, too – traces of ozone and various highly-unstable radioactive isotopes that are characteristic of the violent tearing of space-time that so many peoples alleged faster-than-light travel used. It really was misleading – they were simply moving at the speed of light through a shortened distance of travel, with the apparent result of having gone further in less time than the speed of light would maintain possible. Simple mechanics, after all.

Another sharp tug pulled the elder from speculation once again. There was ozone, which meant ships, which meant other sentient races. Which meant a diplomatic situation. The tiny sprites that curled under Anai’a’s mantle began to buzz with excitement, wondering if any of them were to be chosen to take their names today.

But before that could be done, certain orders had to be given. The colony was ordered to collapse into a tightly-packed sphere, done sequentially to give a decelerating effect on the sprites and bring them to gently drift in the vague region where the ships have been triangulated to be.

A humming excitement settles over the sprites as they go about their business, relaying commands at the brush of a tentacle. Though they are not so foolish to hope their intragalactic pilgrimage might be complete, they are excited by the prospect of new knowledge, new memories, and new alliances. 

[@darkwolf687] [@keyguyperson]