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You wake with a start, which is kind of how you are accustomed to waking anyway, but today feels a little different from every other time. You take a look around your room, and everything is in place. Your posters are where they always were and your squiddles pile is completely undisturbed.
You give your hands a surprised look, taking a long look at all the little strings on your fingers in colour-coded order. For some reason you felt like you stopped doing that a while ago, but it occurs to you that this is a thing you have, in fact, been continuing to do. You haven't the faintest what any of these strings are even supposed to remind you of at this point, either. You're sure that the oldest one can't be more than a week or two, and the newest was definitely from yesterday, but they all feel so old and foreign on your fingers now.
You shuffle to your feet, and somehow you feel a lot sturdier than you did yesterday. You still feel mildly prone to falling asleep at any second, but there is a definite difference from yesterday. You feel much more well-versed in catching yourself, and even still, making the absolute most of the time you spend asleep.
You are sure it most definitely feels different from yesterday but you can't place just why. You have this weird feeling that you needed to look for something but it existed somewhere else and it's all pretty weird and kind of confusing and you're not sure but these strings are really starting to bug you, so you slip them all off your fingers. You think about adding a new one, one to remind you to think about all of this in greater detail when you are more up to the task, but you don't have the thought more than a few moments before it strikes you as a silly idea, although you feel like yesterday you would have done it without a second thought to the matter.
You make your way through your house, deciding you will go check your garden and perhaps find something for breakfast and... for some weird reason you feel like you should check on your pumpkins which is weird. Pumpkins wouldn't make a good breakfast at all!
You manage to make it there and you just have to stop in the doorway for a second. Which turns out to be more like a minute. Or two. Maybe three.
But you are suddenly feeling very dazzled by your little greenhouse. It's the same as yesterday, nothing too impressive or anything, but it's just....
Wow! Nature, you know? like, okay, so it was like fake nature because everything was homegrown and in a greenhouse and stuff, but wow was it something beautiful. Earth was such a weird, quirky little planet and you're sure you've noticed this before but it never seemed to bear so much weight as it does today.
Today you somehow feel like just exploring! Exploring the whole wide world and visiting every little nook and cranny and doing something to help all the people and places in need and dancing with some strangers in the streets of France and doing karaoke in Hong Kong and maybe climb Mount Everest and even just go visit John and watch some of his silly movies, and Dave and probably spend the whole time arguing the pros and cons of guns VS. swords and Rose and you guess talk about her therapy stuff and maybe make her get some stuff off her shoulders because you always feel like for all her meddling Rose seems to keep a lot of her personal affairs locked up tight.
You think... you think she lost a pet. A cat, maybe? You feel like she might think about it, now more than ever for some reason, and you think it's gotta make her feel sad, and you can't imagine she lets herself cry.
Suddenly you're thinking about Becquerel and you really want to see him but at the same time you think you're supposed to be hiding from him, and a little like he hurt some people. Some people that you really loved.
But that's silly.
Becquerel is a good dog and even a best friend and usually he's hiding from you anyway, not the other way around. And you don't imagine he would ever, EVER hurt anyone, and why would he anyway? And who, on this remote island?
Before you know it you're heading for the door, and as you open it you are surprised to find Becquerel seated neatly on your doorstep with his back to you, staring off into nothing (well, maybe something, you can't tell). He doesn't even shift as you step outside, as if he doesn't even notice you're there, but you're sure that he must.
You movements are careful and planned as you shift to sit down next to him on your doorstep, and he makes no move to vanish.
"Becquerel, you'll always... protect me, right?" You're surprised by the question, and almost just as surprised by how quietly you whisper it. He, of course, does not answer you.
"And you'd never hurt anyone. You're a good dog," you lean into his side a little, ready to catch your weight in case he disappears. Which he, surprisingly, does not. You carefully wrap your arm around him and turn your face into his strong side and you feel so unusually comforted by the snow white mass of Becquerel and you're very, very surprised when you suddenly start crying and you have to bury your face in his side, knocking your glasses askew and you look like a mess probably and your crying on your dog but you're just so....
"I'm sorry," you sob into the expansive white of his being. "Gosh, Becquerel, I'm so, so sorry! I don't know why but I think... I think maybe you do. Maybe you know more than me about what's happened, whatever... whatever it may be. But I'm so sorry for anything... for anything that happened, anything I did or said and... and you're just such a good dog, really, you are! You..." you choke on a sob and have to pause and bury your face into his side a little more and then he nudges you a little with his snout and it messes up your hair but who cares about that.
You wrap your other arm around him and hold him in a tight hug trying to regain your senses. "You're my best friend. Forever. I mean it. No matter what happens," you promise, and suddenly....
He's gone, and you find yourself with a face full of empty doorstep.
You think this should be overwhelmingly sad, but instead you start to laugh like he just pulled the best prank on you ever. You know he didn't really leave, anyway. Becquerel will always be here for you, somewhere. You know so, you just... you just know it. Nothing could ever separate you two. You think, maybe, not even death. Or fear. Or your planet exploding and leaving you stranded in some weird place looking for frogs with Dave and even if he accidentally or maybe purposefully kills Dave.
You halt this train of thought, wondering when it became a tangent and thinking it's not very nice that you just brutally killed Dave in your head. He didn't deserve that, that was pretty rude.
You decide you should probably head upstairs to your computer pretty soon and apologize to him about it, and get a hold of John and maybe talk about his movies and maybe even illicit some secrets from Rose. In a while. For now you kind of just want to sit right here on your doorstep and take in the sight of nature.
Of your planet.
The prettiest planet, you think.
The prettiest of all the planets.
Earth is definitely your favourite planet, and you wouldn't want to live on any other one, or for that matter any other universe.
They wouldn't be bad, you add in your head.
Not bad, no.
But not better than Earth, that's for sure!