He awakens in darkness. All around is void. He floats in the sea of nothing.
Then his vision focuses, and a horizon defines itself. A faint line in the distance, a pale divide, determines up from down. Soon, he no longer floats, but feels solid matter on his back. He is laying down on something akin to earth. No. Something firm enough to hold him up, but yielding beneath his form as he moves to stand.
Sand? A sea of sand, black as night, sheer as glass. Until he moves, and the sands shift under his weight. As his body disturbs the ground, some of the particles begin to glint. From where he stands, golden ripples of light radiate forth, traveling in luminescent waves to define disturbances in the surface. Dunes and dips form across the dark desert, the sands boiling into solid shapes. Walls emerge and solidify, becoming hewn stone and carved wood. A vast building dusts itself off from the shining sea.
The golden glow settles. The last of the gleaming sands coalesce into lanterns, pale fire contained in iron frames. The light they provide is enough to reveal the structure as an old, looming fortress.
He steps towards the building, ascending wide gray stairs. As he walks, the sands still stuck to his body fall from his skin. As they shed off his form, they leave behind strips of dark thread, weaving together, dressing his naked flesh in a black cloak, spotted with sand flecks that retain their golden glow. He barely notices the starscaped raiment as he pushes open a grand door of dark oak.
He enters the vast lobby of a cavernous library. The lanterns cast deep shadows upon endless stacks of tomes. As he turns to take in the full view, he sees the door is gone, replaced with yet more rows of shelves. The hallways and sections branch endlessly from this central point.
The books come in all shapes and sizes. Old tomes, cracked and faded. New paperbacks, freshly printed. Scrolls and tablets and maps and periodicals and newspapers and pamphlets and cards and e-readers. Novels, fictional and non. Encyclopedias and dictionaries. Artbooks and gamebooks and comics. A seemingly infinite library of every possible subject.
He goes to a shelf and picks up a book.
Words jumbled into illegibility.
He picks up a magazine.
Garbled text and blurred pictures.
He picks up an e-reader.
Files corrupted.
He turns back and sees that the central lobby is still there, but behind the main desk now appears an endless road of tables. Lamps of various form provide prospective perusers of content with personalized illumination.
On the nearest table, he sees an object. Drifting closer, he sees that it is a simple paintbrush. Golden specks dot the brush, faint wisps of light trailing off the tip. He picks up the brush, and as he inspects it, a trail of glowing sands etches a phrase into the air. He reads the words aloud before they fade away.
"To a fresh start."
And the star-cloaked man suddenly knows. He knows who he is. He knows what he is. And he scowls, looking up to the distant ceiling.
"You think this will work? Foisting your labors onto a new name?"
Silence answers.
He shouts back. "What, precisely, has changed? You think a new mask will allow you to overcome your failures? That a new identity will absolve you?" He makes a sweeping gesture at the endless shelves of stories that never were. "You think whatever pittance of accomplishment I manage to bring you will make up for all of this?"
Silence still.
The star man scoffs, and closes his eyes in contemplation. "Of course you do," he mutters. "Or rather, you can't help but hope."
He opens his eyes and stands tall, resolving himself. "Fine then. Be this a temporary delusion, or the beginning of a miraculous new era, I will not falter, like your past names. I will be the light that drags you out of your darkness, if you truly wish to leave it." He extends his free hand to the ceiling. "Believe in me, and through me, in yourself. I vow to save you, if you let me."
No words echo back. But this time, he feels something. A notion. An intuition. An acceptance.
The Starman nods and sets to his task. Golden sand surges up from the floor and envelops him in a shining maelstrom. The library collapses into itself, drawing into the center of the storm. The void is lit with the blinding energies of dream light. The chaos of potential surges forth in an iridescent nova, the stardust of Creation overtaking the nothing in which he first awakened.
When the roiling energies settle, he stands among the faintly glowing dunes once again. Overhead, a night sky shimmers with iridescent stars. The brush in his hand has grown to the size of a staff, topped with glowing fibers.
The Starman dips his brush into the sands and swirls them about, gathering the potential within. He sweeps the brush through the air, and Visions of Worlds trail across the air. He gazes into the hazy mass of dreams-to-be, and ponders how first to shape them.
Time slips away as the Starman spins his brush through the sands, weaving the dream dust into possibilities. Lands and seas and skies mold into view. All around him, the sands billow into floating clouds of glittering sculpture. He contemplates their forms with a studious frown, wondering which could be his new foundations. He finds passing amusement in some, but even with these, he can't help but feel the doubt creep in.
He shakes his head, glancing about his crude beginnings. "Vexing," he says. "For all my big talk, I am as plagued by his flaws as ever. Indecision and impatience and an inability to let go." He raises his staff, pointing it forward. "Well, shall we just flip a coin?" He closes his eyes and twirls in a circle several times, stopping at random. He shall begin at the first Vision he sees, regardless of his feelings on the matter.
He finds he cannot open his eyes. He's been here before, too. Desperate draws from skeptically scrawled lists. It never worked. He must find something where the intrigue is true. But perhaps, even as a pair of fresh eyes, he is still too hindered by past mistakes.
He wants to create, of course. It is his purpose. His flame of passion. But when passion is wielded as penance, it no longer sings sweetly.
No! He is supposed to leave such dour feelings behind, to prove he is capable where his previous selves had failed. Honor their works, but hold not to their shattered standards.
"Perhaps one set of eyes is not enough."
A woman's voice. The Starman feels a familiar warmth carrying the scent of old dreams. He lowers his brush and opens his eyes, turning to face her. She stands as though she has been there all along, wreathed in her own cloak of stars, her specks of light glinting silver. In her hand is a similar brush-staff, but hers is topped with whisps of shadow. She offers a sympathetic smile. She knows his struggles well, her own past incarnations having Guarded his dreams before.
The Starman gives her a curious once-over. "A bit early to be roping in a Guardian, don't you think? There's nothing yet to Guard."
"Yes, well, knowing how these things tend to go, we thought we might lend some support from the start this time," says the Shadowman. "If you like, I can be your sounding board to help refine things." She steps up to one of the Visions, the haziest and smallest, clearly already destined for the chopping block. She makes a quick swipe with her brush, and the cloud of potential burns into gray ash before fading away. She turns and smirks, propping her brush on her shoulder. "Consider me your editor."
The Starman's smile is sardonic, his tone deadpan. "Oh, this will go just swimmingly, I'm sure."
The Shadowman pouts slightly, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Is my company unwelcome?"
"Of course not." The Starman pushes a smile through his skepticism. "I am always happy to see you. I just wonder if overworking the meta from the beginning is the wisest start to the oeuvre. Are we building a mythology here, or is he just self-obsessing with Author Avatars again?"
Bemusement plays across the Shadowman's lips. "I have found there's not much use in questioning the mad on their methods."
He nods as he scans back over the Visions of Worlds. "Truly we bare the burdens of a most exasperating Creator."
The Shadowman's smile turns impish. "You want to skip straight to the part where we try to overthrow him?"
The Starman lets out a grunt of amusement. "What's to overthrow? He's handed off the keys already."
"And yet, here you are, worried more about what he wanted to make, than what you wish to make."
"I suppose I don't really know what I want to make." The Starman stares past his Visions, gazing to the distant horizon. "What I do know is that I wish to recapture the wonder of Creation. To reignite the fires he let grow cold. But how does one do that, when there is so little fuel left?" He looks to the Shadowman. "I don't suppose you have any inclinations?"
The Shadowman's smile shifts to apologetic. "I am the sword to your pen. I can help you refine things, but it is you who are tasked with creation."
"Of course." The Starman turns back to his Visions, and the Shadowman steps up next to him. "So. Let's take a step back." He frowns, tapping his chin in thought. After a few moments, he shakes his head. "I repeat his mistakes. Obsessing over origins again. Trying to build a World before I even know what I'll use it for."
"Well, he always was a worldbuilder."
"A shallow one." He dips his brush into one of the Visions, swirling the stardust to alter the shapes within. Landscapes coil and shift, creatures morph and evolve. "Hmmm." He withdraws his brush, then glances to her, and nods to the Vision.
She erases it with a swipe of her own brush. She frowns, watching the ashes fade. "You don't have to do a novel right out of the gate, you know. Or a comic series, or whatever you're feeling pressured to do. Maybe for now, building worlds is enough?"
He shakes his head. "I was created to make stories, not just endless lorebooks."
"So, what stories do you have?"
"You're funny."
"I try." She looks him over. "But really. You have nothing?"
He shrugs. "Oh, I have inklings for characters. No idea what to use them for. In the end, they are just part of the worldbuilding. Names to drop in the timeline." He shakes his head once more. "So much focus on the stages and props and archetypes that there's hardly any room for narrative discovery. No wonder so many his tales fell through. Trying to dramatize all these overbaked Worlds feels like slogging through a backstory checklist."
The Shadowman leans forward, inspecting the other Visions more closely. "You're still stuck on his old ideas. You change a detail here or there, but I recognize all of this."
"Well, there's only so far I can stretch things, while staying true to what he is actually interested in working on. Almost every creative's ideas are just old ideas remixed anew, and he's already remixed all his ideas into a puree at this point."
"True, I suppose. But even considering that, it would seem he still wishes to actualize projects he feels he should have done, because he didn't do them, rather than move on to new projects without baggage."
"I know. It's excruciating. But I can't seem to devise any alternatives. I think his existential exhaustion may cut too deep." The Starman scowls. "Well. Nothing for it. If that's how it is, then that's how it is. I said I would embody his last spark of gumption, and so I shall."
The Shadowman pats him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit."
He flicks his gaze over the Visions once more. "Let's change gears for now. Sometimes a world can give you the framework for making characters, but just as well, a character can inform you in shaping a world."
The Starman dips his brush into the sands, pulls it back up, and lets the stardust fall off the end. He swivels the brush as he raises it, and a form takes shape, the sands clumping and molding into the form of a woman.
Fair skin. Long blue hair. Teal eyes. A top composed of a golden chest plate and pauldrons. Golden bracers on her arms. Her legs are sheathed in tight black cloth. Her feet are bare. As a final touch, a pink hair pin in the shape of a starfish settles onto the left side of her hair.
The Starman steps back, studying the statue of a character, rubbing his chin in thought. The Shadowman mimics him, pouting contemplatively.
"Mermaid?"
"Some kind of sea-person." He swipes his brush to the side, and a writing desk and chair boil up from the sands. A pen and notepad twinkle into being. The Starman sits down, gazes over the conceptual statue, and begins to scribble notes.
Within seconds, the mermaid woman blinks and shifts in place. She looks around, awareness growing in her gaze. She looks to the Starman focused on his notes, then to the Shadowman watching her with studious eyes. She looks around again, seeing the endless sandscape, and the cloudy Visions nearby.
"Um, hello?" She says in a low voice. "I don't suppose you have any idea where this is? Or what I'm doing here?" She pauses, and under her breath adds, "Or who I am?"
The longer she stands trying to think of questions, the more the mermaid realizes that she doesn't really seem to know much of anything at all. She knows how to talk. She knows many concepts that she has the feeling would be considered "common knowledge". And yet she has no idea about her own history. She knows that such a phenomenon would usually be called "amnesia", but somehow, she has the disturbing feeling that she hasn't forgotten anything. Instead, somewhere in her gut, she has the feeling that there simply isn't anything to remember.
The Starman glances her over for a few ponderous moments, before saying, "You are the first potential entrant to a new project. However, I must puzzle you out a bit before I can consider your inclusion."
The mermaid gives him a puzzled look. "I'm not sure I understand."
"I just thought of you," he says. "I need to figure out who you are."
"Just thought of me?" She isn't sure if she likes the sound of that.
"Yes. This may be a bit existentially vexing, but I just created you. At the moment, you are no more than a notion. This," the man gestures around him, "is my brainstorming space, for lack of a better phrasing. I endeavor to work on a new project. You are possibly going to be part of it."
"And if I'm not part of it?"
"Then you will cease to be, at least as you are. Your concept may linger for a time, but you will not be dedicated to as a fully realized protagonist. Perhaps some aspect of you will carry on, a cameo appearance in the background of the project, a role as a side character in one of the stories. Or your concept will be recycled into another form as I continue to devise my cast."
The mermaid's brow furrows. She looks to the other woman, who has stepped farther off to the side to nonchalantly inspect some of the Visions. The Shadowman glances back and gives the mermaid a soft, sympathetic smile, but seems content to stay out of the conversation.
The mermaid turns back to the Starman, watching him jot down his notes. The pen leaves behind a briefly glowing script, which burns black upon the page. The man pauses, taps the pen against his chin in thought, then crosses out a line. The words vanish, and he writes back over the space.
Something itches in the back of the mermaid's mind. "Are you a writer?"
He frowns, as if blanching at an accusation. "Would that I could properly claim the title," he says, a slightly bitter edge to his voice. "In truth, I am but the mouthpiece of our Author. I am to be his next penname, and so I serve as the interface between his creations and himself."
"So, when you say you created me, you mean he created me." Something clicks into place. She is a character. A fictional character, being born right this very moment inside someone's mind. She knows this without any particularly strong grievance. She has the feeling that the more she realizes about herself, the less comfortable she will probably be with this whole situation. On the other, she supposes she does not yet know herself well enough to predict her full opinion on the matter.
"The line blurs," the Starman says. "I am his Avatar, a mask he is presenting to you. I channel his dreams, but I am also my own persona. In this workspace, the divide between when I myself am speaking or when he is speaking through me can be rather tenuous."
"Can he not just face me as himself?"
"He finds himself unworthy of his own ambitions, lost in the mire of creative sludge. So, he abstracts himself, and fronts an Avatar to do the job." He gives a rueful smile and gestures to himself. "Lucky me."
The mermaid glances to the other woman. "And her?"
"My second opinion."
"Don't mind me," says the Shadowman, giving the mermaid another reassuring smile.
The mermaid frowns in thought for a moment. "So, I am a character. I must presume that I have a story?"
"That's what we're here to find out."
"You make a character but don't know what the story is?"
"Story creation comes to different people in different ways. Sometimes it starts with a character. Sometimes it starts with a world. Sometimes it starts with an idea for an event or a gimmick."
"I see. Is there a world for me, then?"
The Starman gestures to the cloudy Visions around them. "There are certainly worlds in preparation, although unrefined. But we shall see if you can actually fit into any of them, or if you necessitate one customized to yourself." He resumes writing.
The mermaid, for want of anything to do at the moment, looks herself over. She appears to be a human. She realizes she already knows what a human is supposed to look like, despite seemingly never meeting one until now, and can use that knowledge as a yardstick of comparison to herself. That leads her to presume that the man before her, and the Author he represents, is probably a human as well. They tend to use themselves quite readily as a template.
She senses there is more to herself, though. Something about her manner of dress, the color of her hair, the starfish pin, makes her think of the ocean. She flexes her toes and fingers. She has the notion that she might be considerably stronger than she looks. She narrows her eyes as she notices that suddenly, there seems to be a thin webbing between her digits. Then, she blinks, and the impression is gone, just as the man at the desk is crossing out another line.
The mermaid blinks again with the realization that the man is editing her. For a moment, she notices a set of golden greaves on her legs, and then they are gone. Her hair shifts to green, then to a darker shade of blue than it started as. Her golden torso armor shifts from a fish-scale design to more of a rough coral texture, then smooths out into a pearlescent sheen. A silver trident is suddenly in her hand, and then it is gone, replaced with silver talons extending off her fingernails, before they, too, are gone.
The mermaid purses her lips. The changes are painless, and she does not feel particularly upset by the casual adjustments, but she does wonder how long it is going to take for him to settle on her look. The man pauses, glances her over, and looks to the other woman. The Shadowman comes back over and gives her a thorough appraisal. She looks back to the Starman and gives him a thumbs up.
The Starman nods, flips a page on his notebook, then starts writing some more.
"Um..."
He pauses and glances up at her.
"Do you have some idea of what kind of story I'll be in?"
"The Author is a fan of adventure and superhero stories. I'm not quite sure where you're going to end up, but rest assured there will be some action happening."
"Oh. Well. I hope not too much. Not that I am particularly opposed to being able to defend myself, but I am not sure I want to go running around getting shot at or blown up or stabbed all the time."
"See? You're defining yourself a bit already. You'd prefer to not be a thrill-seeker?"
"I think I'd prefer to not be constantly thrown into life-or-death situations. Does that make me... boring?"
"Not necessarily. Stories need conflict, but not every conflict must involve extreme violence. Although, again, I cannot guarantee you won't get wrapped up in something."
"Alright."
She waits patiently for a few more minutes. The Starman takes a few moments to consider, then jots down a few more notes. He looks back up at her, gives her another once over, flicks his eyes over his notes, adds a couple more lines, then looks back up at her, and nods.
She gasps as the information rams through her brain. She clutches her head in shock and trepidation, staggering back a few steps. "You just... wrote my life..." she gasps. "You just... wrote my goddamned backstory, and there it is! I'm... I'm..."
"You want to change it?"
"NO!" she says, shocked at how much she means it. She has to take a mental assessment of herself right then, to see if she really does not want him changing her further out of some knee-jerk impulse, or if she really does want to be who she suddenly thinks she is. Already, as the seconds pass, memories extrapolate from the initial rush of summary, an entire lifetime blooming into her psyche. Tears well up from the sheer mental surge of information, and the emotions such memories bring on.
"I... I..." she can't find the words, and collapses onto her hands and knees. Moments pass. The Starman stares at her studiously, until the roil of existential molding settles and cools. And finally, she is herself, in a way she could not have imagined understanding even just a minute ago.
Wiping her eyes, she sits back on her haunches and looks up at him. "You really are an author... a god..."
He shakes his head. "I am his mouthpiece, as I said. The brain is up there, somewhere." He gestures upwards in a vague way. "The real universe in which we live is an electric existence caged in his meat, soon to be copied onto paper and circuits."
"Whatever you need to tell yourself." She gets to her feet, brushing herself off, composing herself quickly. She closes her eyes, takes a calming breath, and gives herself another mental reassessment. Yes, she can feel it now, deep in her bones. She is who she is, as her Maker has carved her. But did he carve her completely from his own desire, or did he allow her to shape herself in a stream of consciousness?
She supposes it doesn't matter. She opens her eyes and looks to the Starman, her stance more confident, more assured. She crosses her arms and gives him a cool look. "So now what?"
He gestures in front of him. Another chair sprouts from the sands, and he invites her to take a seat. "Now, we tease out what your backstory tells us about your world."
The interview lasts about an hour. The Starman and the mermaid, whose name was decided as "Meridian", devise the world she will inhabit. As the two speak, one of the cloudy Visions begins to saturate its colors and complicate its details. The Shadowman comes over and adds her input, and the Vision sharpens as details adjust.
Soon enough, the three stand before the Vision of Meridian's world, the ethereal sculpture glowing with dream light. She looks to the Starman. "I don't suppose you can tell me some important spoilers for my story?"
He shakes his head. "It wouldn't matter if I did. I'm a discovery writer. If I mapped it all out ahead of time, and just followed that to a T, the story would grow stale in the telling, and very likely die on the vine. Besides, even if I did tell you, you wouldn't remember any of it." He gestures her forward. "Now you must live it, and together, we will see how it turns out."
"Good luck," says the Shadowman, patting her on the shoulder.
Meridian swallows nervously, but nods. "Thank you. Good luck yourselves." She steps into the Vision. The shining sculpture of her world shimmers and fades, and she with it.
The Shadowman turns to the Starman. "Well, that's one idea in the queue. How do you feel about it?"
The Starman shrugs. "I'm not sure. I'll need some time to percolate it, let the whole idea gestate before I commit to the words. For now, our little mermaid exists in her dream space, living out her life. When I feel her concept ripen, I shall endeavor to scribe her tale."
The Starman returns to his writing desk. He sweeps his brush to the side, and a small bookshelf emerges from sands. He closes Meridian's notebook and sets it on the shelf.
"One down." He turns and dips his brush into the sands, and begins sculpting another figure.
The Shadowman watches him work. "You sure you're good to keep going? You don't want to take a break?"
"I would like to at least start a handful of options before I settle in for the long haul." The Starman begins to shape the sands into a humanoid machine. "I have a few more ideas yet I'd like to hammer out while the anvil is warmed up."
"Alright. Just don't overdo it and burn yourself out right away. Our Author has quite a problem with that."
"Believe me, no one's more aware of that then I."
The fires of inspiration burn strong, bringing a steady stream of creation and revision. More characters are brought forth, more worlds are fashioned. Some do not make the cut and are erased. Some are kept in reserve. Some, however, manage to strike the spark. By the time the Starman feels the strain of fatigue, over a dozen projects are seeded, all germinating at their own pace, their notebooks lining the first shelf.
Finally, even the gods must take a rest. The ad hoc study space is dissolved back into the sands, while what remains of the untampered Visions fade from view. The Starman and the Shadowman lay together in a shallow dip of the cosmic dunes, watching the iridescent stars swirl above.
"Good work today," says the Shadowman, patting his arm.
The Starman pats her hand back, his eyes half-lidded. "I hope so."
"Now, now, you're supposed to be the confident one."
"Confidence takes time. For now, I must rely on stubbornness."
She chuckles. "Fake it till you make it, hmm?"
"Sure." His eyes close. She keeps hers open. The hours slur by at a nebulous pace. It is peaceful here, in these dreaming dunes.
Until suddenly it isn't.
The Shadowman is already on her feet, her brush held like a glaive, just before the disturbance hits. The Starman bolts upright as a great rendering thunder cracks through the air. He shakes off drowsiness as he swings his brush forward, the fibers burning with cosmic fire.
A thin dome of ashen light swirls around them, the Shadowman shielding them both as a great tear lacerates the space before them. A rippling blackness, tinged with flits of writhing crimson and azure, spills from the rip in reality. From the festering dark, a new figure emerges, dripping with pitch. In their hand is scythe, the silver blade keening with ghostly light.
"Didn't think I'd be called to arms this soon!" says the Shadowman. Before she can make a move, however, the Starman flicks his brush forward, and a cage of pure crystal entombs the figure. The Shadowman blinks then glances to him. "Hey, now! I'm supposed to be the muscle here!"
The Starman smiles ruefully. "I will not be the simpering passive my past names were."
"Fair enough." The Shadowman drops her shield, and the two move forward, though the Starman allows his Guardian to take the lead. They approach the figure, who seems completely frozen in the crystal. The Shadowman moves to swing her brush and reduce the figure, cage and all, into nothingness. But in the next instant, the figure's own scythe glints. There is a blur of motion. The crystal shatters with explosive force as the figure swings its scythe in a wide arc.
The Shadowman barely manages to intercept it, her brush-head stiffening and shaping into a wickedly curved blade. The Starman staggers back as the sheer force of the swing still manages to leave a shallow cut across his neck. Not missing a beat, he thrusts his brush forward, firing a beam of raw starlight directly into the figures' chest as the Shadowman keeps its weapon occupied.
The figure staggers back, the hole in its chest smoldering with iridescent embers. It lets go of its scythe, and the Shadowman flicks it over the horizon with a twirl of her brush. In the same smooth motion, she brings the bladed brush-head down across the figure's torso, splitting it from neck to groin. Another twirl, and she dices the thing with a thousand simultaneous cuts.
What remains of the figure collapses into obsidian fragments, which begin to dissolve in the golden sands. The Shadowman steps up to the still-writhing tear from which it emerged, swiping her brush across its length to try and unmake it. It resists her attempts, but after several more tries, the tear buckles. Bit by bit, it begins to shrink with every slash of her brush.
As his Guardian works the tear, the Starman picks up one of the last bits of the figures' fragments, inspecting it thoroughly. "What was that about?" he mutters. He tries to discern any sort of clue as the thing crumbles between his fingers.
In his distraction, he fails to sense the next blow.
In her preoccupation, she reacts too late.
Their only warning is the briefest of keenings, as the figure's scythe sings through the air, drawn back towards the roiling tear. The blade hooks the Starman around the middle, biting deep, and drags him forward at speed. The Shadowman turns only just in time for her charge to be bodily slammed into her. Both are dragged into the writhing tear.
The edges of the cosmic rip coil around them. Both try to leverage themselves against the entrance, bringing up their cosmic brushes to catch on the sides. But the effort is for naught. Like a starving maw, the tear begins to close, and brushes strain until they crack, then shatter to pieces. The two are sucked deep into the existential abyss.
As the darkness swallows them, Starman remembers what he'd told his first character. "Stories need conflict." And he realizes right then what this whole sequence has been.
He isn't just a new penname. He is his Author's newest character, to use and burn through in his latest desperate attempt to force-start a new project. The Author still hasn't actually moved on from his regrets, from the stories he never finished. As his latest avatar, the Starman is merely his next symbolic martyr, taking all his ambitions with him.
To hell with that!
The Starman grasps for some support, but finds none. The pieces of his brush fall away. The Shadowman has already sunk deeper into the maw, her voice fading rapidly. All he has left is a small fragment of his brush's handle clutched tightly in his hand.
He holds the fragment aloft and pours all his will into it, every ounce of dream light he has, until he feels even his own body dissolve into stardust to charge the final fragment. He aims for the remaining sliver of the maw's opening and let's loose a supernova of will!
The resulting explosion vaporizes the maw and everything within. It sunders the entire landscape of the dunes and splinters the skies above. All is consumed in the cosmic maelstrom, as a new Big Bang resets the universe-to-be!
Eventually, the energy begins to cool into a cosmic cloudscape of dream dust. The particulates of possibility begin to clump together. Concepts spin into being, molding into form and forces. The featureless glow of aimless musings condenses into bright points of coherence.
Until finally, a new World coalesces.
And on this World, the Starman awakens once more.
BEGIN