Writing Prompt - The Last Flare

The light of stars are like a cosmic time capsule. What we see is what existed in time at a different point and frame of reference before we even have a chance to observe them. 

A lesson hard earned: you cannot take a passing moment back. Once it's memory it's gone. 
To sound melodramatic?

"Life gives us a present. It's unfortunate if we don't receive it."

Side note: Say what you might about Rick and Morty, but some of the music they feature is straight up amazing. Don't Look Back has been on my replay cycle a lot these past weeks.

-L.B. James

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Today's Music:  Don't Look Back (Diane's Version) - Kotomi & Ryan Elder
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imtFT33Xm5I

Prompt: The Last Flare (Third person, Semi-Omniscient, Scif-fi, Bittersweet)

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The stars outside the suit's faceplate shimmer like distant memories. Their light is cold. Brilliant, but unreachable. He drifts. The hum of the suit's life support and the stillness of his breathing the only sounds.

An alert flashes mutely. A warning to count down the last, dwindling supply of safely breathable atmosphere remaining in his supply. He is beyond the moment to care.

“I thought I was building a legacy,” he murmurs to no one living. “Mapping galaxies, decoding the silence between stars. But I never learned the formula of my children.”

A flickering holo-image hovers nearby: two siblings, frozen in time, laughing in a sunlit garden. The recording is grainy and static-strewn. The file corrupted by years of radiation and neglect. He watches it again, as he does every night, hoping for some gesture, a glance. A note for anything to make them feel closer here at the end. A distance so great even the light of his eyes could never hope to reach them in fifteen lifetimes.

Launch schedules. Telemetry data. Streams of information. His obsessive focus. The gravitational pull of the next discovery always seemed to accelerate him beyond their orbit. He told himself it was for them. That the future he chased was to be their inheritance.

But now, in the vast emptiness of space. The justification felt brittle.

"They needed a father. Not a pioneer." He says. The inner glass of his faceplate was foggy; the last vestiges of life made visible upon its inner surface. A recording notice was blinking mutely, just at the edge of view.

Beyond, a dying star pulsed in the distance. A mirror of his own fading awareness.

He wondered if they ever forgave him. If they ever understood the inner paradox of his own mind. A man capable of navigating stellar space with the ease of a dolphin in a distant sea, yet deficient in following an earthly path to familial obligation. The real frontier, the expanse of the unknown he should have sought exploration of, was...fatherhood. He finally understood now.

The silence was pressing in. He closed his eyes. 

His thoughts were drifting to the warm sunlight basking on a tired , and timeworn face. The sweet smell of honeysuckle were filling his senses with a feeling: Joy.

Contentment.

Home.

Like a string in zero gravity, his thoughts were drifting. 

"If now were then? To be with them all again?"

The warmth spread. First to his fingers and toes.

His hands.

His feet, legs and arms. 

The string was curling. A pull. a gentle tug into the great beyond. 

"I would say, 'I've travelled the stars but never learned how to be present. My only focus shall be yours and yours alone from this moment until my last...'."

He felt immersed. One with the cosmos as the certainty of final understanding filled his mind and soul. 

His brain, ready to stay. His heart, reluctant to depart.

"No, my children. Today?"

He felt the edges of his vision blur. The end in sight.

"...is the perfect…"

The final flare. The light of a dying sun beccoming no more. Already missing a millenia before, it was now a spot in the void within an ocean of memories.

...

...

...

"...day."