The Last Winking Star

The last winking star fluttered like a bulb whose filament was reaching overload.  In every direction, the expanding universe lay, just beyond view, a field of empty pinpricks wandering away.  There were moments in between, particles of hope.  There was a nimbus around the star that flared occasionally, brightening.  But the long dark years chilled, and the distance to relations went over the horizon.  It became difficult to believe that anything beyond its field of view could exist or had ever existed.  

Still it burned, alive, creating by the forces of gravity and fission the elements that might give birth to new starscapes.  Its cherished, budgeted energy fading, it made one final burst of light, hoping to remind others how it persevered.  

Whatever might have seen its last defiant act, it could never know.  What was once a universe full of bright lights with immeasurable distances between had blanked out.  Would its end lead to another beginning?  There were no philosophers yet to read the entrails of this oblivion, no physicists to bring down laws like Moses from the mountain describing a conservation of light.