Not The End.

She leaned against the railing of her summer home near Milan, surveying the lake front expanding out before her. It wasn't a new sight, nor a particularly stirring one to her way of thinking. A view that had been built one molecule, one generation of erosion at a time as she had watched. Fine silk slid comfortably across her skin, but in itself it brought no comfort. No amount of warmth clinging to her lithe form could penetrate to the core of her being.

Behind her the woman cleared her throat. "What are you going to do? Are you just going to lounge around here and let them do this?"

She stretched ever so slightly, unsure as to whether what she was feeling was guilt or simply mild annoyance. It had been so long since she had felt anything at all. "Perhaps. I'm still on holiday after all. Five hundred years of holiday left."

"So what, you're just going to stay here for five hundred years? What will you even do if this entire world is completely destroyed? How will you go on holidaying then?"

She drew herself up, having expected the woman's childish tantrum all along. "I will simply move to another world, another lake, a more beautiful sunset perhaps. You feel sad because this is an end. That is not true though, this is not an end, not even a beginning. Just another in a sequence, the three hundred thousandth failure according to my count. Saddest of all, you're just a pawn in a game that I will be rejoining once this holiday is finished. Your world could be saved at a word from any one of us, but it would destroy plans built over countless eons. Place assets paid for in the blood of entire galaxies out where they will almost certainly be destroyed."

"You mean, we're just not that fucking important. You're telling me that all this sweat, blood and warfare that we've gone through just wasn't enough for you fuckers? The sum total of our existence amounts to a pawn sacrificed for shit all." The woman simply deflated as she spoke the final sentence.

A tear rolled down her cheek. "Well, at least you understand." She looked up at the silent specter of death hanging in the sky, knowing without being told it's odyssey of years of travel and millenia of hand guided innovation. A subtle pop and another, larger, vessel appeared alongside it. The battle was short and ultimately one sided, the larger ship easily decimating the smaller one.

As the larger vessel began to depart a single white streak appeared across the horizon, cutting across it's length. The explosion lit up the entire sky as the ship scattered to pieces burning away in the upper atmosphere.

"They were the last of their species. Once one of the greatest military powers in the galaxy, and to be honest their ship was still one of the finest warships ever constructed. What a pitiful end to such a proud race." The woman's sobs interrupted her. She turned, perfect serenity and composure as the woman broke down in front of her. For hours the two remained exactly the same while the sounds of celebration from the nearby cities filled the air. A few more layers of erosion contributed to the shape of the lake.