Sunrise from the dark side

The observation deck runs almost the length of the world and it is, hands down, the most beautiful room I have ever stood in. You'd think a civilisation hiding behind a star would face away from it. They don't. They built the best room in the world to look out at the dark, with the Sun as a kind of held breath off to one side, and — if you know where to point — a small bright dot much further out that a very tall, very kind local pointed to and named, gently, as the place I'm from.

I asked one of them why they park here, of all places, and got an answer I keep turning over: "Because no one looks, and we are tired, and it is a good place to be quiet for a while before we move on." They're nomads. This whole flat world on its ship is a rest stop. A rest stop the size of a world, behind a sun, for a few million years. Then they'll move on and someone, somewhere, will be very surprised.

Bring a jumper. The deck runs cool and you'll want to stay for hours.