Aldebaran

A young starriear caught in a supernova. Has since become an explosion himself. Stands and walks for up to 5 minutes at a time, just enough time to alarm his siblings.

Aldebaran is young, as starriears go. His birth was explosive, and from soon after he opened his eyes he felt himself dominated by a notion that he must travel, accomplish, create, push his small and weak body to just shy of its breaking point—nothing can dissuade him from searching out his purpose and his niche here, as his magic shapes the same processes that give birth to stars, in miniature. Wisps of gas pulled to his palms when he cupped them for the first time; stardust swirled and compressed when he concentrated his unpracticed power, until the energy that built broke its threshold and the fusion reactions began. An infant starriear created an infant star, imperfect and unstable. Though his magic protected him, the heat scalded his palms, leaving him with an ability he desperately wanted to use in ways that would’ve pleased the Witch, but, in his youth, had little control over. So he drifted, as starriears do, collecting dust when he came across it, testing and practicing until his shimmery palms were callused and he could leave his first works to grow—dropped haphazardly in space by someone who had little idea what to do with them after he’d formed them, they always fizzled out instead. Frustrating, but it was a nice thought, to think that he could learn. Promising. Get the practice in his fingers and ask for the theory later, if one of his ancient siblings visited.

The driven little starriear had much to learn about those parts of the universe he could never hope to harness, but those parts were what he looked to most often. His curiosity often overpowered his caution—dangerous, when violence surrounded him and dwelled in his core. It was owing to his insatiable hunger for experience—seeing and feeling had to be better than simply knowing!—that, several thousand years ago, Aldebaran found himself drawn to a cauldron of light and color and heat and raw energy, far in the distance. It was something he wished he could be, if he grew ancient like his brothers. It was where he wished he could be, after having drifted through nebulae where he would one day coax newborn stars to nestle in their nursery, to grow and grow and grow. Aldebaran followed that speck of light and radiation for a long time, over the distance of light-years, drawn like a moth to a flame. So much time passed with his eyes transfixed on that single point that he never heard its faint hum sink lower and lower, only to pitch suddenly back into a shriek. It never crossed his mind that something was about to go very, very wrong. What he’d found was a star in its death throes, one that had consumed the fuel it needed to maintain its equilibrium and was now devouring itself under its own gravity. This star was speeding towards something—bad. It  collapsed in on itself, growing hotter and denser and deadlier, and Aldebaran floated closer to its mysterious light, waiting for the moment that he would come close enough to converse with it like it was an old and respected friend. Closer until, for a split second, the light was gone.

The star imploded.

Aldebaran had no time to realize what had happened before the implosion rebounded outward in a cataclysmic shockwave that sent a blast of superheated gas in every direction. He had come too close, had held his fingers over the flame too long, was too stunned to call on his magic and escape in the instant of quiet before the storm. By the time instinct pushed him to bring himself to safety, an outer shell--the corpse of the giant star--had been sent surging into space at unfathomable speeds and with an unimaginable amount of force. Something pulsed at its core, a new heartbeat of something too dense for him to understand, spinning rapidly on its axis, but Aldebaran did not stay to see what the destruction had created.

The Crab Nebula had been set into forming, and its pincers had maimed him.