Galagog, Part 2
Obscure Sorrows. 350 words, 1 minute read. With ChatGPT.
The desert night stretched vast and endless, a cosmic abyss draped over the world. Nessa tilted her head back, feeling the pull of it—like if she let herself go, she’d drift upward, swallowed by the ink-black void. The Milky Way split the sky, indifferent. But beneath that indifference, something else lurked. Watching.
"You feel it, don’t you?" Jonah’s voice was low, almost reverent.
A shiver ran through her. "Feel what?"
"The galagog." He let the word settle between them. "That moment when you realize how small we are. How nothing we do matters, except… somehow, it does."
She dragged her gaze from the sky to Jonah. His face flickered in the firelight—half in shadow, half illuminated, like a threshold he was about to cross.
"It’s too much," she admitted. "Like staring at something that shouldn’t see you back."
Jonah exhaled sharply. "Yeah. That’s why I called you out here." He hesitated, then glanced upward. "You remember when we were kids? That junk telescope we built?"
She smirked, though unease curled low in her stomach. "You mean the one that nearly burned your garage down?"
"Yeah." His fingers tightened around the notebook in his lap. "I never stopped looking. And I found something."
Nessa followed his gaze. He wasn’t pointing at a star—just a patch of black sky.
"A signal," he said.
A thread of unease wound tighter. "Like aliens?"
"Not noise. A pattern. Buried in the background hum of the universe." He swallowed. "And I think… someone knows we heard it."
The fire cracked. The weight of the cosmos pressed closer—not distant anymore, but near, leaning in.
"So what now?" she asked.
Jonah hesitated, then opened the notebook with trembling fingers. "They answered back." His voice barely carried over the wind. "And I think—" He met her gaze, something raw behind his eyes. "I think they’re waiting for us to respond."
The desert stretched silent. The stars had always been distant. But as she stared into the void, something stared back.