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The soft, silvery light that filtered through the great view screen was all that illuminated the gathered crew of the Imperial Cartographic Ship Mantilla.
Some shuffled uncomfortably, dimly aware of the acrid smell of sweat despite the icy cold of space that crept into the room. Like every other system in the ship, the climate control was at minimum capacity. A desperate gambit to avoid detection.
Most through stood wordless, transfixed in terrible awe at the Eldar ship emerging around the gas giant's horizon. All were familiar with tales of the Eldar; grins of sharpened teeth, soulless eyes, flashing knives and gleeful, senseless pain.
Few had seen the beauty of their homes.
From a distance, the ship was like a great flower. A ring of translucent petals billowed lazily in the vacuum, light dancing across their surface as they rolled and changed.
At the centre, the body of the ship extended forward. Not the with proud, jutting profile of an imperial ship but akin to an outstretched hand, firm but welcoming.
Strange bubbles dotted the surface in hues of green, yellow, red and other colours never imagined by human minds.
Slowly, even stranger wonders emerged. Sliver stands springing from the Craftworld's stern flexed and strained with the movement of the ship towing a vast, papery structure behind.
The almost delicate looking surface was frozen into strange shapes and patterns; some geometric, others an imitation of a river or a cooling lava flow, great leaps and whorls free from the shackles of gravity.
Every ridge and crest, trimmed with the frost of frozen gasses, was picked out in the tiny points of light as Eldar ships ferried back and forth, giving the entire structure the appearance of a gleaming nugget of precious ore.
No one spoke for a long time after the ship had disappeared into the blackness of space, there was just the quiet, wet sound as they wept.
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