Discovery of the starstumps

 Twinkling in the endless deep stood the small pale holes poked in the veil of the void. These stars were the only witness to how the emptiness started to churn and twist. The darkness frothed and opened to a bright blue glowing swirl. The soft blue light illuminated a rush of ebbing darkness, and as everything calmed down the swirling light had solidified into a solid portal.

Its blue light illuminated small debris and rocks floating in this void. A space sloop, barely larger than a common bed, slowly drifted out of the portal. It bumped and pushed debris with its carapace-like hull.

Rather than scuff or scrape, it rolls off the shell without leaving a mark.

As the ship moved, propelled by a bright blue jet, it neared a dense purple nebula. The loose chunks and pieces got denser as he neared, and their size increased. Slowly the machine is driven into the thick cloud as a spoon into whipped cream. The cloud fizzled and popped against his hull, and sputtered and crusted as the hot jets touched it. Yet eventually, the vessel is forced through.

The nebula is hollow. It was formed in the void millennia ago, as a dense star had collapsed onto itself, forcing the base molecules that had formed it to combine into dense and complex sugar molecules. The resulting cotton candy cloud and the small white dwarf that warmed its center had become its own alien environment.

The debris he had found before was clearly visible now and appeared woodlike. Making notes as he lied in his space sloop he drove the machine forward. Soft shelled flutterworms passed him in their tireless pursuit. He in turn passed a skywhale that had come to rest in the sweet nebula. The giants were found all over the void, but to see it alone was noteworthy.

As he drove towards a dense internal cloud he managed to spot its denizen, a great troop of space puffins. They would dive through the shell of the nebula, swim between the stars and bring collected star warmth to their eggs.

An electric sparking peaked his interest, but just as fast his interest was taken by a small explosion nearby. Debris and splinters spread out from it, and large pieces shot out with vigor. He had found the first piece of his search. 

The wooden asteroids confirmed his suspicions. The strange and often alien biosphere of the ship the lone Shee had travelled with had not originated from the gene banks from albia. Clear as day before him was the evidence, the original source of the starseeds: the starstump. Things that appeared like wet, blind fruitbats fluttered between the orbs, cheerfully gobbling up the starseeds. The edible things were a decoy, he knew. The stumps reproduced by division, which explained why the cloned seeds on capillata never sprouted.

A special compartment grown to be explosion resistant on his vessel held the wooden asteroids, but he took samples of all things he met in the strange place. His demeanor complemented the cheerful embroideries on his robe. Perhaps he would indeed complete the ecology of the meso.

The starstumps can be downloaded here on creaturescaves.