I — Dust

Before there was light.

Four hundred light-years of cold. Hydrogen, grit, a rumour of carbon — drifting, patient, unobserved. Nothing is happening, slowly.

II — Collapse

Gravity listens.

A shiver passes through the cloud. Everything begins to lean inward, and the leaning learns to spin.

III — Ignition

Ten million degrees.

Hydrogen is crushed into helium and the dark is finally answered. A photon born at the core needs ten thousand years to reach the surface.

IV — Release

What it gives back.

Shells of gas — carbon, oxygen, iron — shed into the dark as the fire cools to an ember. You are made of what it gave back.

Origin · a star in four breaths