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It takes a while for me to notice that Erid doesn’t have seasons.
I mean, of course it doesn’t—it would need a tilted axis for that, which it doesn’t have. Encased in my little snowglobe, it’s not like I’d feel much of it anyway, even if there was stuff going on outside my biodome. I’m blind to everything that isn’t shown to me, brought as a souvenir to the hermit I’ve become.
Still, a good amount of time goes by before it truly sinks in. I wake up every morning to the exact same temperature, and I go to bed at night to a slightly lower—but still consistent—one. I work out exactly how to dress myself to be comfortable in this unchanging climate, and my circadian rhythm becomes like clockwork, tuned to the perfect cycle of my dome. I have an Eridian clock by my bedside, clicking gently as I sleep, and I swear I’m in bed at the same time each night, down to a minute or two.
And so, after just under two years since my arrival on Erid, I look at the thermometer built into the wall of my dome with a slightly different expression than usual.
It’s a pleasant twenty degrees Celsius, just as it was the day before, and the day before that. It’s vaguely cloudy, dim enough to be able to look up at the artificial sky without hurting my eyes, but light enough for it to feel like daytime. The brightest minds on the planet worked tirelessly on perfecting it, and I have two dozen or so people around the dome at all times, making sure it stays that way.
I couldn’t tell you where the urge is coming from. This place was built with my needs and preferences in mind, tailored precisely to my individual wants. I was never a big fan of summer, anyhow, and the sensation of sweat-damp clothes is high on my list of things I would permanently remove from my life if I could.
And yet, the next time Rocky comes over, I find myself asking him to pass on the request to raise my dome’s temperature for a few weeks. Nothing crazy, I hurry to clarify, remembering that Rocky can’t possibly know what is comfortable to humans, or even to me. Twenty-six, maybe. Enough to feel the difference.
When I wake up the next morning, I feel nothing. My house is well-insulated, as a sort of reserve in the extremely unlikely case that something’s wrong with my dome. It could be nuclear winter out there and I’d be none the wiser. Besides, I didn’t expect word to spread that quickly; it’s gotta be at least another day or two until the changes take effect.
Which is why when I open my front door that day, it’s like opening an oven.
The first flash of heat is the worst—twenty-six isn’t all that much, after all—but I physically recoil, considering for a brief moment if I’ve miscalculated.
But then the heat settles into my house, evening out the imbalance, and I reconsider. I open all the windows, preparing breakfast under a warm breeze that passes through the whole place.
And then, following another, equally spontaneous urge, I step out into the sun wearing nothing but boxer briefs and an unbuttoned shirt that, in hindsight, I feel a bit embarrassed for wearing in class. The light in my dome is artificial, nothing ultraviolet about it, so I don’t worry about my lack of sunscreen. I just leave the house to take in a familiar scenery with new eyes.
There’s no one point of illumination, so the light reflecting off the water isn’t as harsh as sunlight would be. The sand feels warm under my heels, and I don’t have to worry about crabs cutting me on the way, nor shards of beer bottles or still-burning cigarette butts. It’s nothing like home. It’s everything like home.
For a good while, I just walk along the shore, wondering why I haven’t thought of this sooner. I do prefer cloudier weather, sure, but surely it should’ve occurred to me that a little light would lift my mood. Not that I’ve been particularly sad lately. It’s just different. I feel the difference, a light, instinctive kind of joy as I close my eyes and let my skin get warmed by what feels very much like the sun.
And then, in the midst of that, I hear the faint humming sound of someone slipping through the flexible part of my dome.
I’ve told Rocky that most humans prefer a heads-up before getting visits, but that’s one thing he has yet to get into his head. He just gets so excited whenever there’s news to share, or simply because he wants to see me, and I can’t even be mad at him. It’s nice to be wanted like that, to have someone genuinely look forward to spending time with me.
And also, it was only a matter of time until I would’ve started wishing he were here. That’s how it always goes.
I wave to him, realizing a moment later that it’s my left arm I’m using. It’s healed over nicely. Still scarred as all heck, but it doesn’t hurt to move anymore.
Rocky comes to a halt before me, checking me out with all the dismay his featureless face can muster. “You are naked,” he says. His cadence is that of a police officer asking me if I have any idea how fast I was going. “Inappropriate.”
Gosh, I hope this never stops. I hope we never fully get used to the complexity of each other's species so we can keep having moments like this. I can't remember ever laughing as much as I have these past two years, despite the fact that I was under threat of death for the vast majority of it.
“Good morning to you too, you weirdo,” I say, giggling. “I'm not naked, first of all. And second of all, partial nudity is okay sometimes. It's usually expected at the beach.”
“Why, question?”
“Because you usually go to the beach when it's warm, and there are special clothes designed for swimming. So that's what you wear at the beach.”
Of course, there was no reason to pack swimwear for a trip to space, so I have to make do. It feels distinctly different to be in my underwear, even though it covers just about the same amount of skin as swim shorts would. Just goes to show how much of a difference conditioning makes.
“This isn't that,” I tell Rocky. “I don't have any special swimming clothes with me, but it'll do.”
He perks up at that, his legs straightening to add a few inches to his height. “You want to swim, question?”
“Yeah. You wanna join, bud?”
He stares me down for a moment, vibrating slightly.
And then he's running for the water.
“Hey!” I call after him. I chase him farther down the shore, where he throws himself into the waves. Being as heavy as he is, I doubt he can actually swim, but he seems content to submerge himself and let the tides pass over him. I slip my shirt off my shoulders and leave it in the sand.
The water is pleasant as I enter, just warm enough for me to forgo the acclimation phase and walk right in. My foot brushes Rocky where he stands beneath the surface, and I kick him lightly in greeting, to which he responds by all but barrelling into me, knocking the ground out from under me.
The water is about waist-high here, and Rocky’s just tall enough to catch me, holding me aloft as one might hold a cat to help it catch a spider on the ceiling. His xenonite suit evens out any sharp edges on his skin—and, of course, it keeps Rocky’s radiator safe from flooding. I wonder if this kind of life support system was something he’d worked out before ever going to space. He looked so excited to get into the water; I doubt this is his first time.
I expected him to put me down to keep bullying me, but I keep half-sitting and half-floating in his hands, carried around like a trophy.
“This isn’t exactly swimming,” I say. We haven’t talked about how Eridian hearing works underwater, but I doubt there’s anything these guys can’t hear.
Sure enough, Rocky responds, a little muffled but otherwise clear: “Is Eridian swimming.”
I can’t tell if he’s messing with me. It’s a curse and a blessing, really, because he could tell me just about anything, and there’s always gonna be a period where I believe him. Who am I to say that Eridians don’t carry each other around the water, one of them beneath the surface and the other on top? For all I know, there could be complex social hierarchies attached to who carries who. This could be the highest honor. Or Rocky could be calling me weak and fragile. I wouldn’t know.
It’s kind of hard to relax with my legs and upper body curled like that, balanced only by one little claw on my tailbone and another between my shoulders, but it’s just another part of the weirdness that comes with life on Erid. I’m about to get used to it when Rocky’s arms gradually lower, setting me back into gravity.
“Show human swimming.”
A part of me flares with insecurity, remembering just how infrequently I actually got the chance to swim back on Earth. Additionally, I have no idea how Eridian gravity will affect me here. Maybe I can’t actually swim. Maybe I’m physically unable to keep myself afloat, lacking the buoyancy to combat the steady pull of the planet.
But then again, it’s just Rocky. He’d shamelessly laugh at me, of course, but I have about a dozen of things I could laugh at him for in turn. Imagine having no eyes. Imagine not getting to do the detachable thumb trick on account of only having three fingers. My kids on Earth would call that cringe.
I walk a little farther into the sea, where the water reaches up to my chest. Rocky is a shimmering blob of brown beneath the surface, and I can sense his expectant look even now.
Here goes nothing.
I lightly kick off the ground and go for a breaststroke. There’s definitely a difference compared to Earth: it takes more energy to move at all, and even more to coordinate myself enough not to sink. On the other hand, the waves are far gentler here. Being this close to its star, Erid has no moons to pull the tide forward. Outside of my dome, the waves are caused by wind, and inside, it’s purely for my benefit.
“Amaze,” says Rocky from below me. His notes are far easier to pick out underwater than actual words would be. “You look like Eridian land creature that have tiny short legs and big body.”
“Hey, screw you.” I get my legs back under me, standing in the water with my hands on my hips. “You sink like a rock, so you have no room to talk.”
Rocky laughs, because I guess his life knows no greater joy than making fun of me. “I change you name to ♪♫♩. Is more fitting.”
“Well, I change your name to—” I pause, thinking. “To—freaking—Douchebag. Yeah. How do you like that?”
“Is beautiful,” Rocky says. “I wear new name with pride.”
Shaking my head fondly, I tip backward to float, and it actually works. I also haven’t gotten around to actually testing the water here. Being on my back like this, it seems like whatever the gravity would’ve done to me is cancelled out by the salinity. I float just a little lower in the water than I’m used to, but I do float.
“And now you are dead,” Rocky says. “Sad. I will remember friend ♪♫♩ for long time.”
“You are such a jerk,” I say, laughing up into the sky.
And then it’s quiet. As if per unspoken agreement, we let the moment pass, and I take a deep, salt-laced breath and let the waves wash over me. The water is so warm I hardly feel it until it crests against me, turning me this way and that. Every so often I’ll give a stroke of my limbs, just to remind myself of the sensation, bobbing jellyfish-like in the sea. It’s warm. It’s nice. Rocky sings his wordless joy beneath me, seemingly content to just be in the water.
It's surreal how idyllic it is. A house on the beach, free food forever. A friend who comes over frequently enough to make for a comfortable routine, but not enough to make me feel smothered. Full control over the weather, hot days in the ocean whenever I want them. A life that has me aching with laughter more often than not.
I should be dead, I think, and there's less guilt attached to the idea than there used to be. It's more like wonder this time, and a deep, profound gratitude for the way things have played out. It'll take some more time for me to fully believe it, but for now I recite the truth to myself in my head: my death would not bring back my crewmates, and their sacrifices were not in vain. I helped save the world and the stars around it. I can be a little selfish and enjoy this little life I get to live in return.
I wade out of the water when that nothing-feeling gets too much for me and I start missing my own weight against me. While sand and algae stick to my skin, slowing me down even more, Rocky is quick to follow, walking out like water resistance is nothing to him. I don't know if I'm jealous. After all, I can choose to float around on my back near endlessly, which he cannot. Both options have their perks.
I drop back to go starfish mode in the sand, right where the waves can continue to lap at my calves. The sensation of sand everywhere would've bothered me a while ago, but then again, so would many other things. Being half-naked in front of people, no matter how much I like them. Being on an alien planet after being shot into space against my will. It all feels so distant now. Mild discomfort is nothing compared to the things I’ve lived through, and while the thought itself is a dreadful one on paper, I find that my world has expanded because of it. I feel like my lungs stretch farther than they used to when I breathe, letting in more air, sustaining me for longer.
I turn my head to look over at Rocky, and I can't help the thought that it was all worth it.
He plops down beside me, the surface of his carapace glistening reddish-brown. I've never seen him wet before, and I take a good, long look to commit it to memory, filing it in with all the rest. I hope that never stops, too. Discovering new things about him, new facets of him to complete the image.
“I love you, bud,” I tell him, and he makes a crooning noise. It's not the first time I've said it, but I, too, feel a little tug in my chest every time. It feels foreign to say it—or rather, it feels foreign to have someone to say it to. I'm not used to the level of commitment that surviving an insane space mission brings. Sometimes I forget just how many doubts I used to have about people, because when it comes to Rocky, there's absolutely no part of me that considers separation as an option. It's easy to say the words to him because I know we're not going anywhere.
I wonder where the bounds of an Eridian cluster begin and end. I know they can have multiple partners of varying degrees of intimacy, but I have yet to ask for details. There's just so much left to learn, and it makes my little science heart sing.
“I love you,” says Rocky, and I feel the vibrations of his voice in the ground. I sit up to look at him better, shielding my eyes from the artificial sun. “You had fun, question?”
“Yeah, Rocky. Of course I did.” I wiggle my hand in the sand, burying it like a crab before pulling it out again. It feels nice. The sand is finer than the beach I had back on Earth, a pleasant, even weight on the back of my hand. “You know, if you were that into swimming, you could’ve just asked.”
“I thought you would say no,” Rocky says, and I turn my attention back to him.
“Aw, Rocky.”
“You say wet clothes feel bad. You also say nudity is inappropriate. Xenonite would make you sink. So no swimming.”
I make a noise of sympathy. It makes sense. Up until recently, I didn’t know that this was something I wanted, either. I knew the water was warm enough to swim in, but getting back out of it when the air was twenty degrees would’ve sucked. And also, there were so many new things to see, so much to get used to, and early on there was also the whole trying not to starve thing. My mind wasn’t on leisure like it is now. It’s a luxury I had to grow into. “I’m sorry, bud.”
“Is alright,” Rocky says. “We swam now. Much fun.”
“Let’s do this again sometime, yeah? You can bring Adrian if you want.”
He makes a delighted noise, wiggling in the sand, and my cheeks ache from smiling. He still needs that invitation sometimes, a reminder that I do actually like his partner a lot, that I don’t think it takes away from our time together if they’re there, too. Maybe it would actually help to ask him about mate dynamics. Maybe he’d feel less unsure if I had something I could point to, a place to slot into so everyone knows where they’re at. Might help to talk about it with Adrian, too, seeing as they’re the one who basically had my presence in their life thrust upon them, even if they’ve come around to me.
I just want this to work out. It’s still hard to believe what my life has become, the simple pleasures that come with existing with nothing that needs to be done. I’m so, so grateful, and I want Rocky to be able to feel that way, too. We both deserve an easy life after everything we’ve been through.
I shuffle a little closer to him, turning my body toward the sea. The smaller waves make a different sound as they roll against the shore, a higher, lighter noise that reminds me of a baby’s breathing. I still encounter gaps in my memory from time to time; I don’t know how I would know what babies sound like when they’re asleep and their breathing goes all light and quiet, but I do. Maybe a friend of mine had a baby. Maybe a colleague of mine was a struggling single parent and had no other choice than to bring their kid to work.
I open my eyes again, looking down at my sand-clad legs. I’m content to let the memories come with time. It’s not crucial to my survival anymore, and forcing myself to remember never felt good. I’m okay with the way things are.
And then, as I look down at myself like this, something else hits me.
I never noticed. There are no mirrors in my house; there are no mirrors anywhere on Erid, at least not in the sense that we understand them. There’s reflective surfaces, but not intentionally so. My attention has been tugged this way and that, always something new to discover, or else something new to research in the endless encyclopedia I was left with. I had no reason to look at my own body beyond what was necessary to keep it clean.
But now I’m sitting here, and it stares me in the face. Emphasized by my position, my stomach rises up and over my waistband, forming a soft mass that spills slightly over my sides.
“Oh,” I say out loud. I run a hand over this new pudge that probably isn’t new at all, startling slightly at the texture of it. Soft. Yielding. Slightly cold from the water evaporating on it. I touch my body like it isn’t my own, because for a long, long time, it wasn’t. I touch it the way Rocky touched me once he finally had the option to, committing everything to memory, matching it to what he already knew.
“Grace?” says Rocky, intoned like a question. My tears are no longer a big deal to him, but he can’t always read me well enough to guess what’s going on.
I wipe at my eyes, realizing a moment later that I’ve only succeeded in smearing wet sand on my cheeks. The resulting laugh shakes more tears out of me.
“Gosh,” I say, shaking my head.
“You are alright, question?” Rocky asks.
It’s the wrong question, I feel like. Of course I’m alright. I have no reason not to be, not anymore; it’s like everything that ever hurt or upset me is nothing but leaves on the wind, so far away from me that it can no longer touch me.
But the mind is a funny thing. I genuinely am alright, I’m not waking up in terror with no recognition of where I am, and I’m not stepping out of my body because the things it remembers are too much for me to take. It’s fine.
It’s just that some of the grief I pushed down during the mission comes back to me with delay.
“Yeah,” I say, but then I go on, because Rocky can read me well enough to know that that’s not all there is to it. “I just—”
I breathe. I put my free hand in the sand again, brushing the grains along my fingertips.
“I was, like, really muscular when I woke up from my coma. I had machines all over my body that forced my muscles to contract in pulses. They had me bulking up for nearly four years. Probably because some extra strength might come in handy for whatever the mission would entail.”
Rocky musters me, though he tries not to make it too obvious. “Very different,” he says.
“Yeah. I kinda had bigger things to worry about at the time, but looking back, that kind of body never felt like me. I never had a gym membership. The most I ever did was running with friends and nearly dying halfway through.”
I don’t think I ever explained what a gym is, but Rocky’s only dense when he wants to be. He can use context clues.
“So—So it was like—first I wake up absolutely ripped, and it’s a testament to how little control I have.” Another tear rolls down my cheek. I remember the strange, disconnected feeling of disgust that came up in me when I first realized how I looked. I didn’t know who I was at the time, had no way of knowing if this kind of physique was at all typical for me, but I felt in my gut that it was not. I felt, in some distant, primitive part of me, violated. I would watch muscles move under minimal fat, and I would know deep down that my body had been used for something I wanted no part in, molded out of shape beyond all recognition.
“And then,” I go on, “I nearly starve on the way here. And that was within my control, I could’ve chosen not to go, I could’ve, I don’t know, killed myself or something, but it still sucked. And now—look at this.” I motion at my stomach, the proof that I am neither, that I have no need for extremes anymore. Smack-dab in the middle, I am perfectly, wonderfully ordinary. “This feels right, you know? This feels like me.”
Rocky slides closer. One hand hovers in my general vicinity, and it takes me a few moments until I realize what he’s asking.
I take his hand and guide it to my stomach. It occurs to me that he noticed the change before I did, that he simply never said anything because he either didn’t find it important or didn’t want to overstep some yet-unmentioned boundary. If he thought that any amount of skin shown in front of people beyond the face and limbs was impolite, he probably figured that drawing attention to my body would be unwelcome.
But he really, truly looks now. He’s so gentle as he presses his hand down, testing the texture of me, the way my shape gives to his touch. He runs a finger down the line of hair below my navel, then back up again. I can see him considering sticking his finger in my belly button before deciding now’s not the time to tease.
“Is good this way,” he says, and my face crumples like a paper cup. Another hand comes up to wipe my tears, and I lean into his touch like he’s never not been there, like I’ve never been afraid of holding on to what is good. He adjusts his three remaining limbs just to be able to hold me better. “Suits you to be happy and healthy.”
And that’s when I go from powering through to absolutely cracking half. I shuffle around on my butt to put my legs under his, falling forward into his arms. It does, doesn’t it? That’s kind of what this all boils down to. Not only did I spend a few years of my life under constant threat of death, a few months of which I was fully aware of that threat and had to push through every second of every day to not lose my mind, but it also wasn’t really living to begin with. I started coming back to myself when I met Rocky, started feeling a little more like a person when we threw back quips and cordial insults, but most of our time was still focused on the task at hand.
Rocky has every arm he can spare around me in an instant, and his words sink in all the more because of it, because we’re able to touch without killing each other. I am happy. A few years ago I didn’t even expect to be alive right now, but I am, and it’s a darn good life at that.
It feels a little like wringing the last drops of water out of a cloth before hanging it up to dry, like I needed to have this realization in order to fully arrive. Two years or so in the safety of Erid’s hospitality, a good eighteen-ish months of that spent finding my way back to actual food I didn’t have to choke down, but I needed to have it spelled out in blunt, simple words.
I sob into the space between Rocky’s carapace and his arm, and I’m grateful to no end that this is what breaks me. Not some simple mistake that might spell doom for all of humanity. Not the helpless, hopeless dread of finding myself so far out of my depth that I can’t even begin to think up my next steps until random memories flash through my head and give me a clue.
Just that. Feeling good in my body, like it’s at last become a home again.
Making a home of Erid has been a beautiful journey, and I don’t know how to find words for that, either, but this, somehow, feels even fiercer.
This home was not built. It was found again after an eternity of being lost, and it feels like curling up under the covers and sleeping the chill away. It feels like falling into loving arms and being held in my entirety, every curve and divot accounted for.