Jīvitaya has finished the book she was reading and is now bored out of her mind, having nothing to do but sit in bed. Carefully, trying not to cause another flare-up, she crawls over to the window to look out at the stars. She expects them to be cartwheeling past as the ship moves towards its destination. However, she is surprised to see that the stars barely even seem to be moving, as the space between them and the ship is so vast that their movements don't even make a difference. She contents herself for a while to stare out at the nebulas, galaxies, and stars that appear so vivid without the atmosphere and light pollution from Earth blocking them from view. She squints at an empty spot among the multitude of stars.

Jīvitaya yells out a question. "Hey, Kys?"

He calls back at her. "Give me a second!" Indeed, a few heartbeats later, he runs into the room. "What is it?"

She laughs at the bit of concern in his face. "I'm okay, I just wanted to ask you what this is."

She points at the spot, and he approaches to look through the window behind her.

"That's the Aío Void."

"Void?"

"It's a pocket of space that is several millions of light-years wide, and within it there are either a few or no galaxies present."

Her eyes widen. "But that's . . ."

"Impossible? No, it's just very rare."

"Do you know of any others?"

"There is the Tetoobian Void, but I believe you know it as the Boötes Void on Earth. I believe it's one of the largest Voids that are known of, if not the largest, spanning 250 million light-years out of our universe's 93 billion light-years of space."

She frowns, doing calculations in her head. "That is a lot of space."

"It's point twenty-seven percent of the universe, to be exact."

Her mouth drops open before she closes it again. She tries to speak, but her mouth just gapes open like a fish, no words emerging from it. Kysanden laughs at her expression.

"I know, it's hard to believe that there is something that vast in existence, but it's real, it's out there."

She cranes her head over her shoulder to look at him. "Kys, are you doing anything right now?"

"No, why?"

She speaks quietly, "Well, you've ordered me to stay in bed, and I don't have anything else to do, so I want to know if you'll stay to answer questions, because I've never seen this area of space before." She glances at him to see him smirking. "Kys, why are you smirking at me?"

"You were babbling."

Her voice raises in indignation. "No I wasn't!"

His reply is firm. "Yes, you were." Her cheeks redden slightly. "Don't be embarrassed, it was cute. I can stay and answer your questions."

Jīvitaya smiles sheepishly and ducks her head, looking out at the unfamiliar stars. Something clicks in her head, and she raises it to look at him.

"Kys, where exactly are we?"

He points out the window at a tiny galaxy just barely in view. it tickles at the edge of her memory, like she should know what it is. "Do you know what that one is?"

She frowns. "No, but it seems familiar."

Kysanden laughs. "It should be familiar. That galaxy is the Saliente Galaxy. You would know it as the Milky Way."

She presses her face against the glass. "How . . . how long was I asleep after I was bitten?"

"You woke up the first day when I detached the ship, but then you were asleep for a week."

"It's only taken a couple of weeks to travel this far?"

"You are forgetting, we have been mainly traveling through wormholes. What you see right now is us moving to the next wormhole." He looks down at his tablet. "Speaking of that next wormhole, I'll be right back, we are approaching it and I need to guide us through."

She waves him off and he rushes out of the room. The ship shudders almost imperceptibly, and the stars outside the window blur together for a moment. When they clear, she is met by a whole new set of stares and she stares out at them in amazement. Then she frowns at a dot in the distance, that is not terribly far away. It appears to be a black circle, surrounded by a ring of light. Her face pales.

"Kysanden! Come here as soon as you can!"

He comes bursting into the room, and she points a shaking finger at the circle of space.

"Is that what I think it is?"

He looks, before stumbling back. "Visotutei!"
He glances at her sheepishly, but she doesn't realize what he just did.

"Kys, it's a black hole, isn't it?"

He nods. "It's a new one, too. A star must have just collapsed." he stops and shakes his head. "At least, the light from the collapsing star has just finally reached this point in space. The black hole wouldn't have been terribly dangerous to us before now. We aren't close enough yet to be affected, but I'll have to be more careful using this pair of wormholes."

"Pair?"

"The one we just left, and the one we are heading to."

She thinks for a moment. "That makes sense. What planet are we going to next, and where is it located?"

"We are going to Gaia, which is on the edge of the Hala Galaxy. You know the Hala Galaxy as the Andromeda Galaxy. If that fails, our next option is La'Vi'Ai, in the Miridian Galaxy. If La'Vi'Ai doesn't work, our very last option would be the Jijkal planet, in the Sentail galaxy."

"How long will it take to get to Gaia?"

"About three weeks, unless we run into problems." Jīvitaya groans, and slumps against the wall. "Jīa? What is it?"

"In books, every time they say that they run into a massive problem!"

Kysanden's tone turns snarky. "Well we're not in a book now, are we?"

Jīvitaya huffs. "What am I even going to do for three weeks?"

He grins. "You can read, you can talk, you can stare out the window."

Jīvitaya glares. "That will get very boring, very quickly."

"That's not my fault. If you move around, you'll make yourself worse. Then you'll be stuck on bed rest for even longer."

She groans and tosses her head back. "How long will I even be stuck on bed rest for?"

"You'll probably be fine to resume walking by the time we get to Gaia, but you'll still have to be careful."

She smiles a bit at the good news. Kysanden glances at his tablet as it chimes, alerting him of the next approaching wormhole. As he steps out of the room, she slides her hand into her pocket to touch the healing stone, hoping that it would somehow let her heal faster.

———————————————————————————————-
And I'm back! Here's the chapter! Which planet do you think Jīvitaya will belong to? Also, the Boötes Void is real, isn't it amazing?

And here is your chapterly drawing of Jīvitaya!

Sorry for the tiny blue smudge, just ignore it.

~Goddess of Fate, signing out.