Love Among the Little Sparkles

Laralila and Chob were beings of magnetic flux.  Female and male, tens of light-years long.  When the Great Furnace at the galaxy’s core had blazed in full glory, they had mated and raised many children.

Then the core cooled.  Laralila said “I will bring forth no child in these cold dim times.  We wait till our galaxy bumps into its big sister.”

Growing tired of lesser embraces, they drifted apart.  Gyred and gimbled round the galaxy, and were mistaken for forces of nature.

Once, they met in a brief springtime in the mostly-chill spiral arms.  A warm patch where they joyously embraced, though without making further children.

And first they improved their ‘comfortable blanket’.  Shepherded in more of the gas and dust that natural chance forces had already collected.  And cooed with delight at the little sparkles that emerged.  Mighty stars to us: but these beings were far vaster.

The largest of the little sparkles lived fast and died young.  For stars, it is as if elephants are born and die in a single day, while mayflies live for centuries.  So when one of these giant stars came apart, it was to Laralila a small bubble and a pleasant tingle.

The supernovas put a stamp on smaller stars forming all around them.  Stars making rocky planets of the detritus that was not hydrogen or helium.  But to Laralila and Chob, these were beneath notice.

In human terms, their brief encounter lasted several million years.  And was enormously long ago.  One little sparkle made within their blanket is the sun that shines on Earth. 

Planets outnumber stars, but few indeed have the special balance of chaos and stability that allows complex life.  We come from the brief love and passion of creatures who know nothing of us, and would care little if they knew.

Copyright ©Gwydion M. Williams

Factual Basis
Our galaxy is in a relatively quiet phase of its existence. We will collide with the Andromeda galaxy in a few thousand million years. Star formation will get much more intense then.
It is unlikely that magnetic fluxes could be stable enough to allow life, never mind intelligence. But it makes a good story.
Large stars live fast and die young, as the story says.

And the stars we see are some fairly bright stars, but also relatively near to us.