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You sigh, and stare at the ceiling. You miss them.
Stars above, why couldn't there have been 22 months between you and that stupid explosion? Why 22 minutes? Why not years, or centuries, or infinities? 22 infinities sounds good.
You shift to your left side.
It is what it is. 22 minutes, looping over and over. The loop had to have broken, because you're here, but you don't remember why, or how. Did you save them? Did the sun explode, over and over and over, until the Nomai technology couldn't take it anymore? How did you die?
You fetch a glass of water. You're thirsty.
You'll never see any of them again. The joys of having an obscure source mean that you're the only Hearthian left. You'll never eat soup with Esker again, never roast marshmallows with... whoever you roasted them with. You don't remember their names, but you remember their faces. You repeat to yourself a constant, quiet litany of the planets (ash twin-ember twin-brittle hollow-hollow's lantern-quantum moon-timber hearth-the attlerock-giant's deep-dark bramble-the interloper). You try to ignore the feeling that you're forgetting something, the sickening inauthenticity of googling something you once knew better than the skin on your hands. You write, you draw. You learn. You'll never see the stars again in this lifetime. You can still feel your ship's controls under your fingers.
You lie back down.
You listen to the soundtrack for comfort. Timber Hearth becomes your go-to anxiety attack music, and the first time you hear every instrument align in The Travellers, you cry. It feels like coming home. You still feel your other pair of eyes, sat snugly under the ones you have now. Your ears feel incredibly strange - too short, too solid. You're human now, and you hate it. Casual cruelty, ignoring a dying planet, deciding that some just don't get rights. You read the news when it flashes up on your screen. You want, more badly than ever, to go home. You think you understand how the Nomai stranded on Brittle Hollow felt now.
You get on with it. You don't tell anyone.
It just sounds stupid.