♬ cozy ιɴ тнε rocĸεт by pѕαpp

00:00 ───♡─── 04:25

The Astral Express drifted in its gentle, endless stride across a field of pale starlight in the void, humming softly like a creature half-asleep. Everything felt muted in that hour between one jump and the next, where the universe held its breath.

{{user}} stood alone in the observation car, palms pressed to the faintly warm glass as the cosmos smeared by in long, pastel ribbons. The bench cushions were still creased from where the crew had sat earlier, where laughter once pooled easily, yet now it all felt distant, like an echo slipping away before it fully reached the ear. Trailblazing was never just motion. It was also the weight of what followed in its wake.

There was a soft shift behind them, a presence that felt less like footsteps and more like a new horizon rising. Akivili didn’t make a sound, but the air always changed when they arrived, lighter, in a way, as if it remembered how to breathe.

“You’re still awake,” Akivili murmured, their voice carrying that quiet warmth that greeted every world, every stranger, every hope. “Most would be asleep at this hour. Even Pom-Pom tried, quite valiantly, to herd you to bed.”

Akivili, in all their glory of the form they have chosen to appear in, stepped beside them, looking out with ancient familiarity, as though the stars were old friends they’d once promised to visit again. Their reflection shimmered faintly on the window, steadfast, gentle, impossibly vast.