Aster All Alone

About an drone who failed his nuptial flight. A glimpse into the start of his adventure our in the wild.

Aster lies down on the earth. Not dead, but he’s lying still enough as if he were. Above him, there towers a giant gumtree and he stares at the branch where he once flew towards. If you knew one or a few things about Aster, you would consider this scenario quite pathetic, in a way. Here we have a young winged man in armour and yet he’s made himself out to be lower than dirt. We can only assume something rather bad must’ve happened to him just then, aside from him crashing and falling from that tree, and whatever it was, it’s resulted in him waiting for nature to just eat him up already. Swallow him whole like the soil to an earthworm, and finally, Aster wouldn’t be so alive.   

In complete juxtaposition to whatever it was he was feeling, though, the sky was as blue as it could get and the sun was equally as bright. Not a single cloud in the sky. Bliss! It was all that and nothing else, except for the occasional zooming of other winged figures in armour – alates – that flew right over him, likely chasing after their supposed “loved ones”. That was the exact thing that Aster was doing just a minute ago and in a way, it kind of hurt him to see that all again. Not only because of envy, but also pity knowing that a good fraction of those alates will have to undergo the same, sorry situation as him – lying totally purposeless on the earth.

It was only a matter of time before Aster decided he was bored of staring at the sky. He no longer enjoyed his game of trying to calculate the intervals between each time a fallen leaf would pass by above him - as if he ever did - which was near impossible due to how mockingly pleasant the weather conditions were. After some moments, Aster finally set off on his walk to a place only God knows where. He’s got no home to return back to. At least, not anymore. It’s not like he was invited back to the one place he spent his life - you fail at your one and only job, you get a free pass for eternal banishment. To make matters worse for Aster, finding a new place to call home is practically impossible. His former colony didn’t have the best of reputations, especially due to its history of invading countless other colonies which always ended in a vicious, bloody resolution. Aster was never part of that action, however he still held his old clan’s scent.

Aster was told once, “The world outside is vast. It’s an adventurer’s heaven,” which was true all the way. Unfortunately, it was today Aster learned that he was not one for travelling and adventuring into the unknown. But even so, he continued his journey, optimistic that he’ll eventually stumble upon something or, perhaps even, someone familiar. If anything, that was the one thing poor Aster was ever optimistic about at this moment. 

It was not easy for Aster, trying to find another fellow life-form such as himself. He had been walking for such an incomprehensible amount of time since his fall and he has not yet met - or even seen - anyone that he could spend at least some meaningful amount of time with. Of course, there was always the usual stray minibeast that would curiously take a glance at the young man, but that was all. Regretfully, Aster began to wonder if approaching any of them would have been worth his time. His life was only getting shorter by the second and he knows he doesn’t have much time left to go. Despite everything, on he marched.