“For small creatures such as we,” Sagan had written, “the vastness is bearable only through love.”
And then she thought of the final pages of Cosmos , where Sagan wrote about the Voyager spacecraft—how it would sail through the silent dark for billions of years, carrying a golden record with greetings in fifty-five languages, the sound of a mother kissing her child, and music from a planet that had only just learned to look up.
“We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean,” Sagan wrote. “We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” Cosmos - Carl Sagan
And the stars—those ancient, patient, star-stuff furnaces—did not answer. But they did not need to. The answer was already in her blood, her breath, her bones.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood—all were forged in the hearts of collapsing stars.” “For small creatures such as we,” Sagan had
Her grandfather had circled that sentence, too. Weeks later, Ariadne stood on the same pier at dawn. She had not returned the book to the attic. Instead, she brought it with her everywhere—not to worship, but to remember.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” But they did not need to
The cosmos knew itself. And it was good.