skit #53: she awoke old

Children are bestowed with abundant reveries, and so were they expendable in the economy of young Matilda's mind. She needed only concrete dreams. She was born glum and grew grave. Her heart pumped frugally and her face stayed dry.

Four is a suggestible age. Had she been swarmed by ladybugs or damselflies, she may have become a prima donna, an entomologist. But it was Haley and the Leonids who beckoned Matilda to join them, so to them she would go. She began her preparations immediately: she exercised holding her breath for minutes on end, she learned all the zodiacs' seasons and myths, she constructed a rocketship from an aluminum trashcan and automotive parts. In it, she habituated herself to the anticipated claustrophobia and loneliness of interstellar travel.

She learned the orphaned light she dreamt upon may come from stars whom had extinguished long ago. She wondered which dreams never shone on the earth, if her deserved dream idled in the gut of a black hole.

So, naturally, she became an astronaut and obtained her mission.

Her rocketship stole away from earth with languid ease. She exchanged some professional words with Mission Control. She had trained for many years, so she slept for many years, unconscious to the sidereal suggestions of dreams meant for others. She heeded only to her dream in the black hole.

She awoke old. Further professional words with Mission Control established she and they had grown irrelevant to each other. The Mission Control team she launched with had aged, retired, died. The new team mispronounced her name and she ascertained she'd been forgotten. Her mission had been abandoned but communications were maintained as a courtesy to her sacrifice. She was bid thanks and adieu.

Ahead, a vast blot of nothingness awaited. Matilda approached the event horizon. In her last moments, time slowed down or sped up infinitely. She gave herself and she was spaghettified. All the starlight slurred and spun together with herself. At her final coordinates she remains today, so very close to an arbitrary dream: known by none to be with it, known by none to be without it.