“Among the Stars”

Rudolph had always been able to make anything with his hands—boats, radios, tools, toys. But not even he thought he’d one day build a spaceship.

It began with a signal. One soft blip on an old ham radio he’d refurbished from a junkyard find. Morse code—only it wasn’t any pattern he’d seen. It was rhythmic, musical even. And it pulsed from a faraway place.

He spent weeks decoding it. Then months designing. Welding. Carving titanium panels by hand in the back of his barn. His neighbors thought he was building a grain silo. When the engines roared to life one morning and a sleek silver capsule emerged from behind hay bales, they just stared.

By dusk, Rudolph was gone—launched toward a place beyond maps.

In space, time stopped having meaning.

He drifted past scarlet nebulas and asteroid gardens. The stars weren’t cold here; they shimmered like bonfires. Rudolph spoke aloud sometimes, just to remind himself he had a voice. The ship replied in soft chimes he’d programmed to mimic birdsong.

Then one day, the chimes changed.

“Approaching biosphere.”

A planet rose before him—blue and green, not unlike Earth, but quieter. Still. He landed gently in a clearing rimmed with crystalline trees and violet soil.

Waiting for him were people.

Or something like people.

They had human forms—eyes, hands, mouths—but their skin shimmered like polished stone, and their voices moved in harmony, like chords played on windchimes. And they spoke—English.

“Welcome, Rudolph.”

He froze. “How do you know my name?”

One stepped forward. Her skin glowed the color of dusk. “You called us. With your hands, your signal, your mind.”

They showed him a city of quiet energy—structures built from light and memory, powered by empathy and intention. These people, the Lumen, were the lost remnants of a human expedition long ago—explorers who’d evolved beyond time, shedding war and gravity, living in a harmony Earth had never known.

Rudolph stayed for a time.

He taught them how to build with wood again. They showed him how to move a stone with thought alone. He made instruments from meteors; they sang him songs about stars being born.

And then one night, beneath a twin-moon sky, a child of the Lumen asked him:

“Why did you come?”

Rudolph looked up at the stars. “I’ve always built things with my hands. But I wanted to build something with my heart. I didn’t know where that would take me.”

He returned, eventually.

To Earth. To the barn. His ship resting quiet beneath a tarp.

He never spoke much about where he’d gone. But in his backyard, a strange tree grew—a tree with violet bark and leaves that hummed in harmony when the wind passed through.

And sometimes, when the stars lined up just right, the air filled with the faint sound of chimes… and Rudolph would smile.

To be continued…