Work Text:
The light of the anglerfish is a star in the dark and Solanum is there and alone and moving towards it. There’s a texture to… to… she does not know how to describe it. A texture to the air? To the shadow? To whatever underlying medium that air and shadow rests upon. She is young now, and does not have the vocabulary for it. But where the light of the anglerfish’s lantern meets the complete darkness of the cavern there is a snarl, a tangle, a boundary where light and shadow fold into each other. It’s… a cycle. Like the sands moving back and forth between Ember and Ash. Convection, the word materializing from one of her lessons, the lessons that don’t involve the Eye.
The heat of the light seems to draw in the cold darkness, and it draws Solanum, too. Is that its intent? There is a part of her that is always thinking even when she is preoccupied. And it ponders the biological adaptations of the anglerfish. Do their lanterns possess some mesmeric property? Is it meant to draw prey in towards their jaws? Is that why Solanum is moving past the needle-like teeth, taller than she is, and into the maw that opens out to the plummeting chasm beyond the fossil where she would surely die after a considerable fall and impact?
Self-preservation kicks in and her arms shoot out to either side of her and hold fast to the fossil teeth before she can take one step too far. One step too long.
Solanum’s brain is always working and her body sometimes needs to play catch-up.
She breathes, shaky in the stillness. The infinite blackness beyond the trailing spine of the anglerfish fossil has a mesmerizing quality of its own. She pushes away, stumbling back onto firmer ground.
It’s different here, without Laevi or Lami or Ilex or Taget. They play in the anglerfish cave despite the protestations of their elders, who prefer to stay in the overlook and make their observations of the fossil from there. Still, if they truly believed there was a danger to the children, they haven’t acted as such. The overlook is not shuttered, and from there any child can slip into the cave, which is large and circular with the fossil embedded within the rock wall. So long as no one is foolish enough to do exactly what Solanum just did, there is little danger.
She looks around, self-consciously, for witnesses.
She is alone. It is very late and the city will be sealed shut against the rising tide of sand falling from Ash Twin. Technically, she is not in violation of the curfew enforced by the flow of sand. And even if she were, it’s not unheard of for a Nomai to try their luck against the march of time. There’s always a few stragglers too preoccupied with poking at the caverns of Ember Twin, and they always return to the Sunless City right as the doors are to be sealed. A performance of finger wagging and apologies are made and then everyone involved go about their business. Curiosity is a powerful impulse for a Nomai, almost enough to overshadow the threat of crushing sands.
Solanum is not entirely sure if curiosity is what calls her to be here in this cave with the fossil.
She retreats some distance and sits in the middle of the floor. The anglerfish lantern hangs suspended over its skull. It illuminates the red rocks of the cave, the porous white surface of fossilized bone. The light dances in Solanum’s three eyes and she can hear the distant sound of falling sand echoing up through its jaws like the hiss of a living thing. And how is it that the lantern still glows after the beast has died?
Dead, but not dead. Alive, but not entirely.
The lantern tugs at some part of her that wants to reach out with both hands and cradle it, the light illuminating her palms and her fingers. Solanum imagines the whole of its light suffusing her, transferring into her until she glows with it, from her horns to her fur to her feet, passing over her body with the tingle of an electric current. And she becomes the light that draws in and pulverizes the darkness.
But it’s all in service of luring prey into the jaws of a great beast. It’s a lure to draw in the hapless. She shakes her head against the reverie she has fallen into and from the throat of the dead thing in front of her the hiss grows louder.
The Sunless City will seal up its great gates soon. Solanum rises and pats at her robes, a futile act since she quickly makes a mess of them as she scales the walls.
Before she returns home she looks back at the angerlfish, now far below. Soon she will be too big to squeeze through the overlook and play in the shadows cast by the lantern. And though she never much liked the creature in that cave, she already feels a tug of nostalgia, a desire to commit this morbid playground to memory. What she sees is a single point of light that catches the shadows of vacant eye sockets and the edges of sharp teeth, and the darkness where the light ends.
A flash of light illuminates the Timber Hearth night, and the trees groan against the crack of an explosion. There is a call and response chorus to the tune of “are you okay?” and “still in one piece!”
The Outer Wilds space program isn’t new, but it still causes explosions as if it is. Mayor Rutile is shouting the loudest, a blend of profanity and predictions of malfunctioning spaceships sparking a conflagration that will burn the entire village down to its last home.
The argument is loud enough to be heard from where Biotite leans against the platform surrounding the observatory. It all sounds dire, but Hornfels and the rest have talked the mayor down from canceling the space program every time before and there’s no reason to think this will be different.
Biotite stands up from the rail and stretches, hands reaching up to the stars as they stand up to their fullest height. They’ve grown, though everyone still calls them “hatchling.” It’s likely, they think to themselves, that they’ll never outgrow that nickname. Their own fault, probably. With how they kept getting underfoot of all the travelers and engineers since youth. Biotite has made a reputation for themselves as “that hatchling always getting in the way.”
But could they be blamed for it? With every new spaceship and every returning traveler, there’s more to learn. More discoveries and artifacts to bring back to the observatory. They can only wonder what everyone else is doing that’s so important that they can’t come and see the mysteries of the very cosmos unfold itself for their eyes, one discovery at a time.
True, most of the times it’s pottery shards or rocks. But it’s more the fact that somebody went out there and then brought it back that captures Biotite’s imagination. Someone has gone out where no Hearthian has ever been and brought back evidence of alien life, Nomai life. Biotite comes to the campfires of travelers who have returned to Timber Hearth, and they sit and listen over toasted marshmallows as the travelers alternate between playing music and telling stories. They describe the Hanging City of Brittle Hollow, the storm-tossed (literally tossed by storms) islands of Giant’s Deep, the ruins and small settlements and even the ships that the Nomai left behind. Biotite’s head is filled with thoughts of strange mechanisms and giant constructs, all too big to bring back home so they have nothing to go on except for blurry images taken by probes and the stories that the travelers tell as they idly play their instruments before a crackling fire.
There’s a leisure pace to their discoveries. Outer Wilds Ventures is in no rush to peel back the mysteries of the Nomai. It is not, one traveler says, as if the Nomai are going anywhere. Signs of their abrupt extinction dot the solar system. At one point, Biotite was shooed away from a campfire surrounded by travelers, they are told that the stories being recited are not for a hatchling to hear.
So Biotite borrows a signalscope from Hornfeld’s observatory and they listen in, along with Hal, who is not as interested in space flight, but the two of them grew up together and seldom leave one another behind on their exploits.
And they listen in through the signalscope as travelers tell of Nomai skeletons reclining in bed as if they died in their sleep, or slumped over tables like they were enjoying a meal. They tell of Nomai who seemed to die on their way to some occupation, how their skeletons litter the streets of old settlements.
For weeks after that night, Biotite has nightmares of skeletons spontaneously putting themselves together and chasing after them. Hal is so scared that they don’t talk to Biotite for several days.
This does little to warn them off from being curious. If anything, they want to know more. Far more. Everything. An enigmatic alien race that survived, thrived, left their mark and then died so suddenly their remains were still leaning over their meal? How could any Hearthian not be compelled to learn more?
The observatory museum is their second home at this point, as they crawl around and strain to read the placards describing every artifact.
And none of it seems to add up to anything. Biotite gets no new insight. Not here in the museum. The stories are out there, the adventure is out there. The experiences are out there.
Every night, Biotite stares into a crackling campfire and they imagine alien horizons beyond its warm glow. Timber Hearth is okay, but it is only a beginning.
What if the Eye isn’t something good?
Solanum taps the sentence out into her cane and presses the tip of it into the wall of her room. She watches the words spiral out like ink seeping into paper.
The thought isn’t heretical. But it is one that few take seriously. And Solanum is at that age when her instructors tell her it is natural to stake a contrarian position.
But questioning the intent of the Eye of the universe, the thing that stranded and killed so many Nomai, doesn’t feel like a youthful phase to her. Why does no one else seem willing to consider this hypothesis? Solanum has been to the shrine. Everyone has. They write their theories in spiraling script, branches riffing off ideas but they never seem to mention the obvious. They’re like planets orbiting a black hole, circling this unthinkable conclusion without seeing it.
The Eye does not care about them. It spoke to the Nomai long enough to ensnare a single Vessel, stranding them in a star system where every planet seems uniquely tailored to be mortally dangerous. Why can’t everyone else see the trap for what is was?
It all boils over one day. Solanum is not quite of age, but she’s getting there. Her friends Taget and Laevi are, and it is time for them to undergo apprenticeship. They speak in a rush of excitement about the possibilities of the black hole forge in Brittle Hollow and the construction efforts on Giant’s Deep. The mines on Timber Hearth, even the High Energy Lab on their native Ember Twin. And whenever they speak of those places and those undertakings, they speak of how all that effort is bent towards discovering the Eye.
Solanum’s outburst is public, not too far from the shrine itself. It’s where they congregate now, around tables in a plaza where they pass the time with game boards and logic puzzles.
“What’s so great about a signal that lured us here?” and her voice carries in the Sunless City. Outside, beyond the sealed gates, tons of sand presses down on them. The oxygen-rich vegetation lining the cave walls provides breathable air. They exist in a tenuous space, a tiny bubble of habitability inside a barren sun-scorched rock.
“We used to be explorers on massive starships that warped across the galaxy!” Solanum said. “Now we… cling to whatever meager rock we can survive on and worship the signal that took it all from us! Where’s the logic in that?”
In her dreams, when she says these things, it’s a paradigm shift. Nomai all around her are struck by this new way of thinking.
In her dreams.
But no sooner does she get these words out when Taget and Laevi rebut her points. They want to debate this. It’s all academic to them, somehow, as if this is some theoretical scenario she posited and not actual, documented history. They want to chase this line of logic down to a definitive conclusion and it’s maddening. Anything else! Anything else and Solanum would have played that game. But this was the Eye of the universe and it set off alarm bells in her head, this thing that lured so many Nomai to their doom like the lantern of an anglerfish.
She leaves them to their debate and they barely register that she is gone.
It’s all so stupid, and the Sunless City is crowded and unbearable. Waiting out the sand always gets on her nerves. At times like this, Brittle Hollow doesn’t sound so bad. There, the Hanging City is suspended from the underside of the planet’s crust over a black hole, but at least it’s not sand. It occurs to Solanum that she has the choice of living in either in an extreme closed space or above an all-consuming singularity and she wonders if everyone else truly can’t see that their situation has become insane.
She sits on the ledge overlooking all of the Sunless City. It is, the older folk will tell her, a dangerous thing to do. But dangerous things seem to be all that the Nomai do, she feels.
“It’s a lonely thing, isn’t it, when people do not take your ideas seriously.”
Solanum starts at the voice and looks over her shoulder. It is Bell, the visitor from Brittle Hollow. The Sunless City is much smaller than the Hanging City, outsiders stick out more and Bell is already a Nomai who sticks out. People who dedicate themselves to the study of the Quantum Moon tend to be odd ones. It’s little wonder she had overheard Solanum. Likely half the city has. Acoustics in this place leaves little room for privacy.
“How can they not see the evidence in front of them?” Solanum says.
“Would it matter, one way or the other?”
“If we are actively seeking the Eye, yes!”
“Perhaps if it is as malicious as you fear,” says Bell, “then we should find out so we can protect ourselves?”
“I’m not saying we should… just forget about it.” Solanum is as curious as any Nomai, despite her misgiving about the Eye. “But I question this assumption that we’re going to learn some great cosmic secret. What if it’s evil, or cruel? What if its purpose was to kill our people and strand the survivors?”
“It’s my opinion that we don’t have enough proof to understand the Eye’s intentions.”
“Isn’t our own history proof enough?” Solanum wonders if Bell will have the sense to leave or if she has to storm off again. She has run out of places to storm off to and will have to resort to using the stairs etched into the side of the cavern. It is very difficult to storm while descending stairs.
Bell stands silent for a moment before speaking. “I have a friend who works at Timber Hearth. He tells me of a species of animal that lives in the hot springs there. Charming creatures. They have four eyes! I’m quite envious. The mining operation had to move to another location so as to not disrupt their environment. Given enough time, they may even grow to found their own civilization, but as of now they are simple animals. Imagine if one of them were to wander into the mine there.”
“Why would I do that?”
“As a thought experiment,” Bell says cheerfully. “Imagine one of these simple creatures suddenly in the presence of our drilling machines and conveyors and lifts. The creature would not be able to comprehend what it is seeing. Or understand why such things would exist or what their purpose might be. If we assume our little friend is capable of questioning their surroundings, they might formulate a hypothesis. But now imagine if this creature has the misfortune of wandering into one of our rock crushers. What would happen to it?”
“I imagine what happens to rocks in a rock crusher,” Solanum says mildly. “It would get crushed.”
“Indeed. What would it think, in its final moments? ‘Why is this happening to me? What have I done wrong? Is this object evil? Does it delight in my destruction?’ It is understandable for it to ask such questions, even when we know that it was all an unfortunate accident.”
“It’s not the same!” Solanum says with heat in her words.
Bell simply shrugs serenely. “Perhaps. But if the creature had the option to, I believe it would have wanted to learn more about the crusher. You are not wrong to be wary of the Eye, but I don’t believe that should keep us from wanting to learn about it. Many Nomai did die. And it is sad. And it is unfortunate. And it would be better had they survived and gone on to be with their friends and their partners and live out their lives doing good things. But despite the tragedies, despite it all, we are still here. And we can look back and we can remember their names. And that is not quite life, but it’s not quite death either. So long as they occupy a place in our histories and our memories, they’re not really gone. And we can discover in their place, and dedicate ourselves to their spirit. We are their legacy. And I believe they would want us to learn the nature of the Eye. It is what brought them to this place to begin with.”
“So we can die like they did?” Solanum doesn’t like the words even as she speaks them, but they come from anger that is still venting itself.
“So we can learn what it is they died for,” Bell says. “We can think of discovering the Eye of the universe as a way of explaining their deaths. Or accepting it. We cannot discount the possibility that we may die in turn, but we all die. And it is a fine thing, I think, to die in pursuit of discovery.”
Solanum says nothing. She looks down at the city. She wonders if there’s some innate understanding embedded in her genetics about what a “proper” city should look like, because she sees the Sunless City and it all seems so unlikely to her, despite the fact that it is her native home. It’s all so improbable. This place, the planet it is on, this star system with its many dangers. Yet without it all, Solanum may well never have existed, her descendants, the survivors of escape pods from a ruined Vessel may never have met. All for want of the Eye. It’s all so improbable. So uncertain.
She looks at Bell.
“You… study the Quantum Moon, don’t you?”
“Oh indeed. Study it, explore it, experience it.”
“And the Eye.” It isn’t a question. Eventually, all Nomai studies lead back to the Eye. But the scholars of the Quantum Moon, despite being the ones to get closer to the Eye than anyone else, don’t pursue it the way others do. At least, that’s Solanum’s understanding. Bell’s group has a reputation for eccentricity.
“We do consider the nature of the Eye, yes. Every scholar of quantum phenomena takes a pilgrimage to the moon, and they ride it to where it orbits the Eye.”
Solanum kicks her feet over the deep chasm of the city. She considers this information.
Soon, it will be her turn to serve an apprenticeship. Her childhood is coming to an end.
Slate’s newest student, Mica, sets fire to a small grove of trees outside the village. All in service of testing a new type of rocket propellant. To hear Gossan talk about it, Slate has never been prouder. To Biotite, it’s another day, another explosion. Time repeats itself.
It’s been years since there’s been a find from the Nomai ruins worth making a fuss about. Life… doesn’t change. There’s a few new additions. Someone finally put a permanent fence around that pocket of ghost matter sitting in the middle of the village. There’s a satellite, it takes pictures and little else. The travelers come and go. The design of their ships change. Some of them even begin to incorporate Nomai technology, but there’s no talk of doing the same for the village. There are no humming anti-gravity beams that can lift a person up to the highest tree, no crystals that allow them to build into the side of the valley.
What is it all even for? These expeditions into the old Nomai cities? What’s the point of them if what gets brought back is just going to sit under glass in the observatory?
“Why would I want to live on the side of a cliff?” Hal says, making a face. “I live at the bottom of the cliff. That way, if I fall, I’m not so far up that hitting the ground is a big deal.”
“What if we need more room for the village?” Biotite says.
Hal shrugs. “I think we’ve got to exhaust more options before we have to consider living sideways. What would happen to my succulents if I dropped them?”
“The same thing that happens to your succulents when you water them too often. Or too little. Or give them too much sun or not enough sun or you breathe on them, Hal. They die.”
“I do everything like Porphy tells me and they still wither up,” Hal says mournfully and Biotite pats their shoulder.
“Maybe you don’t have to live sideways. How about upside down?”
“That’s worse.”
“Feldspar says that’s what the Nomai did on Brittle Hollow.”
“Maybe that makes sense on a planet where the moon spits fire at you. Who knows what they were thinking?”
Biotite sighs. Nobody here is in any rush to live sideways. Or upside down. And they suppose they can’t blame anyone for that. Life is… good here.
Life doesn’t change here. And they know they should be grateful for that, but Biotite is restless.
They still come by the observatory nearly ever day hoping for something new. Hornfels mistakes it for interest, but for Biotite, it’s hunger.
“I imagine we won’t be making much more progress on the whole Nomai thing,” Hornfels says one day as they make the rounds dusting at the displays. Biotite is blinking their eyes rapidly at the black rock Gabbro had brought back from some other part of Timber Hearth. It vanishes and reappears with each blink.
When Hornfels speaks it grabs Biotite’s attention. They leave the rock alone and enter the observatory proper. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, not much more we can learn about them at this point, I figure.” Hornfels cracks open the top of the anglerfish tank and drops a cricket in with the tiny monster. There’s a surge of motion and a flash of teeth and the insect is gone and the anglerfish falls still as quickly as it moved. It is fed, but not sated.
“Not without disturbing too many remains and that sort of thing,” Hornfels continues. “Not inclined towards disrupting a person’s final rest unless we have good cause to. We already have one good specimen.” They jerk their thumb towards the one Nomai skeleton under glass. It’s a creepy thing that reminds Biotite of their childhood nightmare while fascinating them at the same time. They reckon they might be slightly taller than whoever this once was.
Hal has commented, on occasion, that Biotite could be very morbid.
“So… what does that mean for Outer Wilds Ventures?” Biotite says.
“Hm?”
“If you’re not studying the Nomai then… what are you doing out there?”
Hornfels gives Biotite a probing look before returning to dusting off the displays. They wipe down the model sun going supernova, cleaning off the blue-white bands.. “Why, same thing we’ve always done, I imagine. Explore the worlds. Find curious things. Bring them back if possible. Tell other people what’s out there.”
Biotite boggles. “Tell stories? That’s it?”
“Well, that seemed to be enough for when you were younger, hatchling,” Hornfels says with a wry smile. “I recall you hanging from every word I had to say. Me, Gossan, Feldspar and Gabbro had to chase you off on account of how you wanted to listen in on stories that gave you nightmares for days afterward!”
At this Biotite nearly hyperventilates because it is such a profound misreading of their childhood. The stories were never enough. They were only ever enough for now. Biotite has always lived with the understanding that the stories will lead to something greater in the future, that the travelers will push the boundaries of what they can explore and discover. That the Nomai are the key to some great discovery, a profound reveal that would change the way Hearthians lived. They weren’t some curiosity on par with the strange rock or the moon that orbited Timber Hearth but only sometimes. The Nomai, even in death, are filled with purpose.
At least, that is what Biotite assumes. They are very rapidly realizing that they might be the only one who feels that way. Hal only ever takes an idle interest in Nomai, but that’s positively obsessive in comparison to the rest of the villagers. They seem to appreciate the stories the travelers tell, but never seem to feel the urge to dig deeper beyond that. The Nomai existed, and now they don’t, and that’s that.
“Of course, you could always join up, hatchling.”
Biotite snaps from their reverie, swaying where they stand. “What?”
“You don’t seem like the sort to be content leaving the exploration to others. Slate always has ideas for new spaceships. They need new astronauts to fly them.”
It’s a nice thought, and one that Biotite has every now and then. But for all their frustrations, they know they don’t have anything to contribute to the space program. They can’t match Feldspar’s piloting skills or daring, or Gabbro’s ability to survive in any environment or Gossan’s technical expertise. Even if it were Biotite out there, what could they find that the others couldn’t?
The answer arrives with Gabbro.
A day comes when they return on their spaceship, riding a pillar of fire as they maneuver it onto the landing pad. Gabbro emerges with an easy saunter and waves off Slate, who is fussing over the state of the ship’s hull and the way its landing gear buckles. When Gabbro comes to the observatory, it’s with a small crowd of Hearthians who are lugging what looks to Biotite like a chunk of masonry.
“Found this on the Attlerock. Figured it might fit in with all your bits and bobs,” Gabbro drawls.
“Alright, alright, just set it down at the empty spot, against the wall,” says Hornfels.
It comes down with a heavy thud as its handlers let it go.
Everyone takes a step back and regards it from a distance.
“Is that… a wall?” Hornfels says.
“That’s about my estimation,” says Gabbro. “Found it in the ruins on the south pole of Attlerock. Looks like it just fell off whatever building it was part of.”
“It’s got… writing,” Hornfels says. Biotite leans over them to take a look.
“Genuine Nomai writing,” Gabbro agrees and Hornfels whistles.
The Nomai had to communicate somehow, they were too advanced not to. But finding an instance of Nomai writing isn’t easy. Hornfels says they use devices that pass electric currents over a flat writing surface. That or they can generate a current in their own bodies. It stimulates the surface to glow with symbols that form words. At least that’s the theory. The passage of years has degraded the electric charge that makes these symbols visible. Before Hearthians can understand Nomai writing, they would first have to see it. And that hasn’t been possible.
Until now.
Hornfels is giddy. “Perhaps… perhaps it’s been exposed to the sun’s rays all this time and that’s kept the words visible? Oh, no, I have to take a picture right now! The words might fade indoors!”
“Got you covered, doc.” Gabbro gives Hornfels their scout, filled with imaging data.
“Thank the stars,” Hornfels says with a breath. “But this might mean my initial hypothesis was all wrong! Perhaps it’s… light energy that lights up the words? Radiation? Some specific wavelength in the electromagnetic…”
They are cycling excitedly through the probe data and speaking aloud. Biotite stares at the writing. It’s not much. A fragment of a message that arcs from one broken edge of the wall to another. But there are symbols, and some of them repeat. And they make up word clusters. They glow an eerie purple that pulses even under full daylight.
Something else glows too. Biotite isn’t quite sure what to make of it and neither do the others. Hal is interested in it, they always did like artistic patterns. It’s a glyph that’s all jagged points and right angles, straight lines that weave together to form a circle and then radiate outward in a complex pattern.
It doesn’t mean anything to Biotite, but it stays in their memory, like the afterimage of the sun stays on a person’s eyes after they look away.
The next day, Biotite and Hal are back at the observatory and Hornfels is already there and greets them in front of the wall with the Nomai writing.
Hornfels smiles like they already know what brings the two back. “Interested?”
Biotite and Hal hold up pencil and paper and nod.
As the three sit on the wooden floor to study the Nomai letters, an electric thrill shoots through Biotite. It is an idea, a hope, a seed of inspiration is blooming. The translation project begins.
Solanum grows. Every day. She takes her apprenticeship. Bell’s field of study isn’t the most orthodox. It is popular, though. Even Nomai who do not make the Quantum Moon their focus of inquiry take the pilgrimage to the Eye of the universe. It’s the closest they’ve ever been. And even though it cannot be reached from the moon, simply knowing that it lay beyond the maelstrom of the moon’s atmosphere is enough to remind Nomai engineers and scientists why they undertake their great projects.
At first, Solanum is skeptical. She still believes the Eye is something malevolent. A trap meant to ensnare curious Nomai. Bell is patient and indulgent and encourages her to undertake the trials of the Quantum Moon. And Solanum does, if only to seek vindication.
Her first trial is on her own native Ember Twin and is the most immediately dangerous. She isn’t too bothered by the rising sand. She and her friends had dared the hazards of their planet long before any of them were of age. She goes down into the lakebed cavern where Nomai ancestors made an early, crucial discovery concerning the nature of quantum objects in this star system.
With the entrance to the cavern flooded by sand, Solanum wills herself to be calm. The sand will not kill her so long as she recalls her lessons. She activates the writing on the cave floor, reads of the experience the early Nomai had, and follows their example.
When Solanum re-emerges on the surface of Ember Twin, it’s from a cavern that shares no physical connection with the one she had entered. Her first lesson is complete.
Solanum is on Giant’s Deep for her next trial. She fights to keep her shuttle under control as she weaves past massive storms and heaving land masses. When she arrives at her destination, Bell is there with an imaging device that Solanum is to keep. She steps into the tower of vanishing passageways.
When Solanum re-emerges, it is only after she has learned how to use her imaging device to capture and freeze quantum objects in place. Her second lesson is complete.
The third lesson is a simple instruction in the inverted tower built into the underside of Brittle Hollow. It is the easiest and the most direct, and as she commits it to memory, Lantern’s Hollow bombards the surface with molten rock. She does not fear it, however. Like rising sand and frenzied storms, it is just another natural phenomenon that will not harm her as long as she is observant. She’s not afraid.
She’s not afraid. This gives Solanum more pause than any of the lessons of the quantum trials. It is not something she could have said of her younger self. Her younger self saw evil in those things that inspired fear. But Solanum as she is now is a different person. A person who willingly trapped herself in a flooding cave and used the quantum shard to escape. A person who braved the violent storms of Giant’s Deep.
She is a person who understands that these are natural forces. They bare no ill will. The universe is.
The Eye is.
The Nomai are.
When Solanum re-emerges, she does not do so as a changed person. She does so as a person who recognizes that change has been happening to her all along.
She takes a moment to collect herself in the suspended apartments of the Hanging City. There’s murmurs of a shift in priority among the top researchers. It is a twist of irony that just as Solanum is coming to terms with the Eye, the project leaders are back to the drawing board, talking instead of some new curiosity; a comet entering the star system.
But that is their priority and Solanum still has hers. Bell arrives to congratulate her. And to take her to the gravity cannon. Her shuttle is ready.
Though her quantum trials are over, Solanum is buoyed by the knowledge that her lessons will never truly end.
Biotite grows. Every day. They grow and learn and they apply to join Outer Wilds Ventures. It is an idle thought transformed into reality, powered by the renewed drive they felt the day that Nomai wall was delivered to the observatory. For all the excuses Biotite made for themselves prior to signing on, it feels surprisingly natural once they are accepted. Perhaps it is destiny, or more simply perhaps there is little else Biotite imagines in their future. Woodcutting? Mining? Farming? Biotite does a little of all those things in the course of their training, but like the neat arc of the Nomai writing, they always circle back to the prospect of being the one who cracks their language and being the first to truly learn about them.
The process is slow, however. And in the meantime Slate teaches them the ins and outs of their latest ship design. The retro rockets misfire and takes out the side of the launch tower and the autopilot is… finicky.
“Don’t use it near the sun and you’ll be fine,” Slate says. “And stop moaning about the rockets. You only got a little burnt.”
Gossan loses an eye to a completely different explosion and is grounded, they take it in good spirit though.
“I’ve got three more and I’ve been thinking of retiring anyway. At least now I can drill you on zero-g maneuvering full-time. Wouldn’t want you to drift off into space with that priceless translator prototype you’re building for us!” they say.
Feldspar disappears at some point, dropping out of contact some time after exploring Giant’s Deep. Everyone puts on a brave face about it, but there’s not much expectation that they’ll come back. In the meantime, Mica fills in for flight training duty even though they have never flown before in their brief, young life.
“Remote control flying totally counts!” they insist. “I mean, if anything it’s harder! So you’ll be trained up in no time. Just as soon as I get the drone out of the hole it made in Tektite’s roof.”
With their path decided, Biotite can’t help but notice how the village is coming together to give them the training they need to take off. It’s a support network they never really appreciated. It’s touching. And it’s humbling. Biotite has spent so much of their life convinced that what they need is somewhere out there, beyond Timber Hearth’s atmosphere. It’s only now, on the brink of their departure, that the value of life in the village is starting to become apparent. They’re going to miss this place.
The translator is coming along. It’s a combination of an energy emitter designed to activate the ancient writing along with a computer that deciphers the Nomai symbols. Biotite could not have completed it without Hal, who takes to the technical aspects with determination. The final piece they needed turned out to be — of course — a Nomai artifact. A staff, the kind scattered throughout every Nomai settlement. Until now they were mostly a curiosity. The buttons at the top play a series of pleasant sounds that suggests an instrument of some kind, but it also emitted energy in a way that interfered with signalscopes. When Hornfels brings one in proximity to the fragment of wall while rearranging their museum, the writing reacts to it.
Hornfels takes the staff apart, Hal wires the parts they need, and Biotite attaches those wires to a display. Nomai writing unfurls to them like the sun, breaking over the horizon of the world to herald a new day.
“Well,” Hornfels says, slightly faint. “This is exciting.”
Somewhere in the distance, rockets roar and Slate’s triumphant yell echoes over the village.
Biotite’s journey is beginning.
Solanum dies. She dies in one, two, three, four, five places. She dies in orbit over the Hourglass Twins, Brittle Hollow, Timber Hearth, Giant’s Deep and Dark Bramble. She dies standing on the southern pole of the Quantum Moon as it orbits five different planets. And though she has never felt death before, she knows that what she feels is death as her body burns and freezes at the touch of some unknown radiation five times over.
But she lives where the moon orbits the Eye. She is shaken and doubled over in terrible pain, but she lives. Solanum is not entirely sure what is happening. No previous pilgrim to the Quantum Moon has reported this phenomenon. Was it part of the experience? Some ineffable revelation concerning existence that the Eye of the universe reveals in that moment?
Solanum is not sure. There is some quantum nature to this that deserves careful thought and considered action. Something is terribly wrong. She feels down to her bones that she must not leave the moon. That she cannot. Perhaps Bell will note her absence and come after her, but she remembers how it feels to die, and she does not believe anyone will come for her.
She is sure that if she were to enter the tower and return to any one of the five locations where she felt herself die, then her death — an uncertainty up to this point — would become very, very certain.
So here she is, dead, but not dead. Alive, but not entirely.
Above her, the veil of the moon howls and beyond that is the Eye. It is the closest she can get.
Perhaps this is how it is meant to be. Perhaps she is meant to fall short of understanding. Understanding the Eye. Understanding her own existence, which has suddenly become a question mark.
So it is appropriate, Solanum decides, that she come to this place and winds up with more questions than answers. She taps her staff restively. She cannot communicate with the universe beyond the Quantum Moon, but going back invites death. She is as certain of that as she can be in a place made of uncertainty.
Perhaps once, not so long ago, this would all be unbearable. But here and now Solanum feels composed, and calm with where she is and how she came to be here. The unknowable does not make her fear as it once did. The universe is.
And she is. She can’t prove that beyond all doubt, but she chooses to believe.
Time passes, she is not sure how much or if it even matters, here in this strange place.
Solanum stands serenely at the south pole of the Quantum Moon and when she does, she sees movement in front of her. Not the uncanny there-not-there of quantum object. There is something alive, and it is approaching her. Her solitude has ended.
Biotite dies. They die in one, two, three four, five loops. Six, seven, eight, nine… they stop keeping track. They die in the vacuum of space, in their ship as it breaks apart, on the surface of moons and planets. Under the surface. They die in ghost matter fields and anglerfish jaws and fireballs. They’re crushed against the ceiling of Ember Twin’s caverns as sand pulverizes their helmet. They die when they tumble off a crumbling cliff on Brittle Hollow and the gravity of the planet’s black hole slingshots them with lethal force into the side of a stalactite on the far side of the planet. They die when Giant’s Deep throws an island at them and it’s times like that, as the rapidly approaching land mass fills the view of their cockpit, when Biotite suspects they are the butt of some cruel cosmic joke. Mostly though, it’s the sun that claims them. Time after time, 22 minutes, to be precise, the sun explodes and wipes the entire solar system out in a wave of plasma.
They want to talk to Hornfels about the tiny model of the supernova gathering dust in the observatory. Tell them that they got it wrong, how the model fails to capture the all-consuming destruction of an exploding sun, but Biotite would rather not have to explain why they know that. Biotite has seen the brilliant blue-white wave of fire pass over them so many times that the majesty of it has lost some of its effect. Ho-hum, dead again.
But they live, waking up time and again to the sight of Giant’s Deep on its serene orbit overhead. Biotite is not entirely sure what is happening. No one else seems to know or recognize the situation either.
Well. Except Gabbro. They’re looping the same as Biotite. For all the good that does. Gabbro is a good person and excellent explorer, just not particularly proactive. They’re content to rest on their hammock on Giant’s Deep, tossed by the storms and annihilated by the sun.
Biotite is not content. They race between planets, convinced that this is all some mistake, some violation of nature. The result of an imbalance that may yet be corrected if only they are fast enough and clever enough. With their translator, Biotite divines the purpose of the Nomai machines and it feels as if they are on the verge of some breakthrough, a way to rescue all those people.
And like the strike of a clockwork bell sounding the final hour the sun explodes, time after time, blasting Biotite back to the beginning with only their memory of what happened before to assure them that they are making progress, working towards some final revelation. Memory is all they have.
The Nomai are still in Biotite’s thoughts but the more they learn of the long-dead race the further away they seem. In the here and the now, Biotite learns other things. They learn the rate of Brittle Hollow’s collapse, the speed that sand passes between the Hourglass Twins, the weather patterns of Giant’s Deep, and when it’s safe to thrust away from the anglerfish of Dark Bramble.
Most of all they learn how fragile and precious their little village on Timber Hearth is as they see it burn, burn, burn away in loop after loop. There are several loops where they never step into the spaceship at all, choosing instead to talk to everyone, commit their names and faces and their daily gripes to memory. Because memory is all they have.
And they learn of the Eye of the universe.
It preoccupied the Nomai and it does the same to Biotite, who follows in their footsteps. Sometimes literally, when they trace the passage of the original Nomai survivors stumbling out of their escape pods.
They believe, as surely as the sun explodes, that the solution is somewhere among the ruins of the Nomai.
So it is a cruel twist of irony when it is a Nomai machine that tells them on no uncertain terms that the sun dies because it is at the end of its natural life.
There is no salvation and the knowledge of this, more than the scale of the sun and the planets and all the space in between, is what makes Biotite feel like a mote of dust pushed along by currents they cannot hope to resist.
The Hearthians will die just as the Nomai did: in an act of cosmic indifference. There is no answer in the great machines. There is no secret knowledge that Biotite had dreamed of learning since they were a hatchling.
There is nothing.
They spend more time drifting between planets or meditating or sleeping at the campfire.
This changes during one of the loops they spend grounded on the village. Feldspar is accusing them of taking it easy like a second Gabbro and Slate grouses that they aren’t leaving because they’re too paranoid about the auto-pilot. It’s only good-natured ribbing and Biotite takes it as such. No one is in any particular rush here, and it’s something that Biotite appreciates now.
Then the sun briefly blinks out and it sends a jolt of fear up their spine.
It’s the Quantum Moon, meandering across the star system on its own whim, orbiting now Timber Hearth. Biotite has read the lessons, progressed through the towers and rode the quantum shard and they have touched down on the moon before and seen its ghostly, desolate reflection of the worlds it orbits. But they have yet to unravel the secret of the sixth location. What they have learned in the Sun Station has blunted the thrill of that discovery and the Quantum Moon is easy to forget about. It slips the mind as easily as it slips from perception.
Perhaps that should change. If only to occupy a loop or two.
When Biotite marches the Quantum Tower up to the north pole and unlocks the sixth location, they aren’t quite sure what to feel. The weight of the discovery of their doomed star still bears down on them and Biotite is reluctant to follow the footsteps of the Nomai doomed while searching for the Eye. Far too much doom going around and the moon in its sixth location does little to change this. Biotite resolves to visit the south pole, pay whatever respects they can and then move on. If the Eye could be reached from this place the Nomai would have finished their search long before they had died.
It is depressing to think of how the Nomai died before their real work even began.
When the two meet there’s no fanfare or a moment where the clouds part and the sun illuminates them. The clouds will never part here. All the suns in all the galaxies are dying.
It’s just two people at the end of the universe.
Past the initial rush of excitement and the somewhat one-sided communication between them, there’s very little here for either. But it is a moment of contact and kinship in the most remote corner of the galaxy under the most unlikeliest of circumstances. Time and space and certainty stretched thin to allow two people to cross the breadth of years to have a moment, a discovery not of more doom, but of life.
Solanum wishes she could ask this stranger… something. Anything. But mostly what they believe, what brings them here, what perspective they have.
Biotite wishes they could invite Solanum to a camp fire and marshmallows and the two could trade stories and talk about things that aren’t supernovas and Eyes and impending death.
When Solanum broaches the possibility of… collapsing the infinite maybes of the Eye, it awakens something in Biotite. Could such a thing be possible? They think of the information in their ship’s computer. There is a throughline there that could work.
They don’t wish to leave, but Solanum is understanding.
Solanum sees that there is something driving her strange new friend, and though they seem reluctant, she silently urges them on. It is something that she had learned in her lessons. Not explicitly, but it is there in how quantum objects work. How most things work:
Before something can begin, something else must end.
Resolve is a curious thing for Biotite to feel in this moment, but they think of Solanum, last of her kind and so close to the Eye her people had dedicated themselves to.
All around them was death, a great dimming of every light.
Maybe they could accomplish one thing, a final victory, complete a legacy by a people they never knew from a time so long ago. A tribute or a thanks or a primal shout into the ever deepening, eternal dark that there were beings here and they thought and built and believed and hoped and they would do so right up to the very end.
And it will be the last, final death for everyone Biotite has ever known. Is it worth it? Is it enough to hold the memory of them? All in the name of… what?
Some final, spiteful shout into the dying night? Is it worth truly ending it all for that?
No.
It is not spite. This is all something long in the making, an endeavor interrupted before it could reach its ending. The Nomai died before they could put it all together, but Biotite could complete their great work.
And if the universe is ending, then let its last act not be destruction, but a conclusion.
Biotite double checks their computer. The coordinates they pulled from the wreckage of the probe launcher still exists. The warp core thrums in the center of Ash Twin. The Vessel lies in the tangle of Dark Bramble, silent as a tomb. Knowing what they know about the sands of the Hourglass Twins and the patience needed to navigate past the anglerfish, the timing would be tight but not impossible.
There will be no loop this time. Only now does Biotite’s first flight begin.
There is this peace that comes over Solanum that is different from what had been before. The stranger’s arrival felt… important in some way she is not able to place.
If nothing else, she is glad for the company. However brief it lasts.
Or… did it last at all? Was there ever a stranger here?
Things are… not definite on this moon, but she is certain that it did happen.
As certain as a person can be in this place.
And if there is no physical evidence that she was with someone else, the peace of mind she feels in this moment is not an illusion. Memory has to be evidence enough, when everything else feels so malleable.
She feels anchored here, for a long time that also feels like a short time. Perhaps her dead selves on the other iterations of this moon have something to do with that, this feeling that she cannot leave the south pole. She wonders how much time has to pass before Bell sends after her. She wonders if far too much time has already passed. She is not sure of her own thoughts.
Then she remembers that everyone else is already dead and she is the last of the Nomai clan who searched for the Eye. Did she remember that, or did she only just learn it? It is easy to lose track of… things. Everything. Even herself. She feels detached here, and yet rooted. She wished she could tell someone about this. Someone who could appreciate the contradiction. She cannot communicate well with the stranger, but they would be welcome company. If they were ever company at all.
Then something… happens.
It is very difficult to explain.
In whatever intangible way she is aware of her other dead selves on those other moons, existing as they do in a state of uncertainty, she is also aware when they… burn away in some great blue-white light that moves in a wave through the star system. And when it does, the five places where she is dead are gone.
All that is left is the sixth location where she is alive.
Solanum considers remaining where she is, to exist as she is right now. But she is not afraid of the unknown anymore. She takes a step. And another step. And the dark moon grows even darker until even the ground is swallowed up and the howling winds fade away. She continues walking until she sees a light in front of her identical to the light that comes from her own helmet and she is face to face with herself. Not a dead self, just… herself. And she takes a step forward. Her other self does too. And they come together and there is a moment of perfect darkness. Then comes a blossom of red light, low but steady. Like the sun.
A campfire. Set before her. Crackling within a neat circle of stones. And she is not alone.
Solanum’s pilgrimage has come to an end.
At first, when the wounded Vessel warps to the coordinates, Biotite cannot move.
They expect the sun to come for them as it has so many times before. Perhaps it is too far away. Perhaps.
One thing is certain, they are now the last of their kind. They know it with the sureness of someone who has seen their home go out in a blaze of light a hundred times before. Hal and all the rest are gone. There will be no going back this time. No undoing of what’s been done. Biotite feels like they should shoulder the responsibility for this, but stars are winking out all around them, from one end of the Vessel’s viewport to the other. The sight of the universe dying bestows a kind of merciful numbness.
They have memories, and memories will have to be enough.
The Eye is everything they expected. Dark and mysterious and terrible and — save for the spine-chilling hum that comes from every part of it and assails their ears through their helmet — it is silent. No answers here, nothing to appeal to. No going back. Only forward.
Until it becomes familiar, and surrounds Biotite with travelers. Gabbro, Feldspar, Chert, Riebeck and Esker. Sitting around a campfire like they used to do, when Biotite was a hatchling listening to their stories and their songs.
And for all the familiarity, Biotite feels that there isn’t another being alive who is as far from everything that could be called hearth and home.
Well. Maybe one being is.
Solanum is here and they aren’t sure how, but she appears to be really here. More present than the travelers, who speak as if in a dream. Biotite can’t be sure what that means. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. It’s good to have Solanum, here and now. Whatever “here” means. Whatever “now” means.
Their campfires song suffuses the air with sound, and like intangible fingers working at a weave the notes bind the smoke and ash of the fire into a veil that swirls above them all
In this place of memory among reflections of the past, something new is beginning.
Though her mask renders her stoic and unreadable, Solanum feels a great surge of emotion, a mix of them inside her. But mostly she is proud. Proud to the point of bursting to tears because it all worked. The striving of her people and the tragedy of her people, it all meant something. From the death of their Vessel to the construction of their machines, it led to this moment and she is so thankful for all of them and she is so thankful to this stranger who salvaged all their efforts in the face of disaster.
A thousand questions dance on her tongue and she can speak to the stranger now. Perhaps language, like time, has lost its meaning. But the presence of the infinite possibilities coalescing from the smoke and the ash takes all their attention. Solanum is fulfilling the wishes of all her people, by being here. She is witnessing the Eye as the original seekers intended. Their suffering was not in vain. She stands tall as the stranger reaches out to possibilities that coalesce from the smoke and ash.
All of the Nomai are with her. Bell, her family, her instructors. Her friends who played amongst the bones of the anglerfish. They live in her memory.
The last of the Nomai looks up. The journey they began so long ago has ended.
Biotite remembers Timber Hearth. Hal and Gossan and Hornfels and Mica and Porphy and Rutile and all of the rest. They deserve more than remembrance. They deserve life. But the universe is. Was.
There is a universe that will be. And if Biotite can commit their memory to what will be, then perhaps that is something.
They reach out to it. It is like a bubble, straining to pop at the slightest touch. All impossibly pressed together, ready to expand and to be. And what an incredible thing it is, to be.
Who are they to deny this new thing that gift?
The last of the Hearthians looks up. The air fills with music and stories of the universe that ended, and of their hopes for the universe just beginning.