Day 615, Morning

I dreamed last night.

I don’t dream very often, but the bodies leaping in the firelight, the flash of feathers and body paint, and the singing and drumming that accompanied them followed me into sleep. This morning I looked again at the things they had given me, and again I was impressed by the fact that everything these people make is ornamented in some way.

My people love beauty. Perhaps once more than a very few of us could create it, for what we brought with us from R’il’n is more than we can create in these times.

Could it be genetic? I know the stories of lost R’il’n, that there were two suns in the sky, and astronomers warned that the smaller would eventually collide with the larger. It was already disrupting our orbit. We had star flight, and it was agreed that we should split up and search for another place where we could live. Art and culture – the creation of beauty – received very little attention, I suspect, in those years when we were building the great ships that might save our people.

And the fleet that found my world, Kentra, for some reason had mostly engineers and technicians, with very few who could create beauty.

Oh, we brought with us recordings of the great art and music of our past. With time these have become ever more precious, for all too few of us can create such things.

When we returned to where R’il’n’s sun had been, to bring anyone left to Kentra, our home planet was no longer there.

Could these humans still have the spark the R’il’nai have lost?