No longer was there even a single, willowy wisp of Joy in Rubato’s cosmos.

She had disappeared. Vanished, like the fleeting nanos he so often manipulated.

Joy was hiding, no doubt, behind the mistaken assumption that someday he would willingly return to those blissful moments of interlude when they pranced through the temporal waves with reckless abandon. 

A time when they shared the sultry and deeply satisfying pulsations that two joined beings enjoy.

Her siren laughter echoed through a sudden whiff of regret as he considered how badly he had treated her. He felt that she was using him. So he used her. Roughly. It was the toxic residue of the unrequited desire of another time.

It made him angry that she dissolved the connection. Everything made him angry.

For eons of Turns he had repressed his cauldron of rage. Rubato was now perpetually vexed. And it erupted in him like the explosion of a galaxy of supernovas. He was a white dwarf, indeed. And he did not care. Nothing mattered.

Except, perhaps revenge.

And it was all her fault.

It was not Joy that he blamed.

But another.