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Ryland Grace is 15 years old and the world is ending.
The planet itself turned onward, the sky hadn't fallen but it seemed as if at any moment the ground would collapse and swallow him whole. Everything hurt and nothing would ever be okay again.
The roof he was living under was far from anything like home. Home had died alongside his parents. So, he stared up at the stars on top of the roof of his foster family's house and wished for many things. For time to reverse. For the power to run far and fast from here, to become a bird and fly, fly, fly to the horizon.
If he could grow wings, maybe he would pick a star and aim to reach it. Maybe somewhere out there home still existed.
Ryland Grace is 35 and the world is ending.
The planet itself turned onward, the sky hadn't fallen but somewhere out there, the sun was fading. Dying.
And if their theories were correct, every single star he was looking at was dying too. Or already dead.
The grief of it all was so vast that it was impossible to fully feel and yet it still stole his breath. Their ancestors had used the stars to navigate, to predict the future, to tell stories about the past. Humans had spent all of history looking up and wondering what could exist out there.
Now they would never know. Either the creatures that orbited those stars would perish or we would before we ever got to meet them.
Finally, his knees gave out and Grace let himself fall to the ship's deck, neck still craned to see the night sky like the lights might vanish at any second.
A year and a half later, he would be running for his life before being tackled to the ground. From his position, he could just make out the darkening sky, the fading sun painting everything crimson.
They inject him with some mystery sedative. He claws at the ground like it would help. His heart kept racing like he was still fleeing.
I'll never see Earth's stars again. It's one of a thousand thoughts that enter his mind; his life flashing before his eyes. He knows he is going to die. Only, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. White spots flash across his vision, like some poor mimicry of the heavens.
Everything goes black.
Ryland Grace had no idea how old he is but it didn't matter.
Not when he could look out the window and see into infinity.
Not when out there, thousands of worlds were slowly ending.
Space was terrifying. But, human minds were incredibly adaptive. And the low level terror had largely faded to the background. It made room for other emotions--like awe. He was seeing things no other human had before. Like dread-- compulsively, he kept thinking of all the ways he could meet his end out here.
Like the bone deep, sickening, agonizingly, all encompassing loneliness.
The stars were so different from out here. So much brighter, bigger; glorious and glimmering with a deadly radiance. It would have been easy to spend hours just staring into the abyss, lost to the endless emptiness. Too easy to let sanity slip through his fingers to be lost somewhere among the spacedust.
He forced himself to turn away. He had work to do.
Rocky was 291 earth years old and his world was ending too.
Everything Grace learned about the alien in the same proverbial boat made him less of one. In fact, every time they communicated, he realized that they had so much more in common than he would have ever imagined--their people and their personalities. It was fascinating to say the very least. But, the more Grace learned about all their differences, the more he liked him.
Rocky couldn't see the stars the same way Grace could. But, space was still a vast, haunting void to him as well. Rocky couldn't 'see' the same way Grace could but he was brilliant and had invented a tool to be able to hear things that he wouldn't otherwise be able to. And when that hadn't fully satisfied his curiosity, he turned to the human and asked, What Grace see? Question.
And Grace told him. I see the great cosmos in front of us, the millions and millions of stars that may or may not have life orbiting around them. I see the nebulous components that make up the building blocks of life; the unfathomably vast bodies that seemed like nothing but a speck from here. Each one glitters and glimmers, glowing with pure energy, pure light. Burning embers in the darkness.
Rocky was quiet for a moment before chiming, You see all of that?
Grace laughed and said, Yeah though a lot of it is human sentimentality. They are burning balls of gas…but they're so much more than that, aren't they?
Rocky hummed in the way Grace had grown to understand was agreement. Stars sound beautiful.
Grace could tell somehow that he meant it, that he'd taken Grace's words in and found them meaningful enough to newly paint the terrifying void into something worthy of appreciating.
Grace turned to look at him, at all his facets.The multicolored lights of the Hail Mary's console catches tiny bits of something crystalline embedded in the earth dark stone of his body, like shimmering flecks of gold. The marks that made up who he was, casting shadows. He was incredible, he was fascinating, he was a miracle. He was beautiful.
Grace's heart swelled in a way that was almost foreign after being alone for so long but the feeling hit like a drug, washing away anything but affection.
The human smiled, They are.
Grace focused the petrovascope on the light being produced by the Blip A as it sped back towards Erid. Away from him. Their worlds were saved.
But, it wasn't earth that he found himself searching for every day.
He was going home. Right?
So, why did it feel like home was getting further away instead of closer?
The stars around the brilliance emitted by the Blip A paled in comparison. Grace watched Rocky's ship until his eyes hurt. When he shut them, he saw the imprint of it on the backs of his eyelids.
The 'stars' in the biodome were artificial in that they were being projected to give the illusion of a night sky. But, they were real in that they perfectly mirrored the cosmos that stretched out beyond Erid's atmosphere. Including the little one just right…there, that he knew was sol.
Beside him Rocky was working on something, claws flying with incredible precision. His other hand rested in the sand--the sand that he'd made sure the biodome team got just right. Grace didn't hesitate to reach out, grabbing Rocky's hand with his own. The grains of sand caught between their palms in the gentlest friction. The only thing between them besides the thinnest layer of xenonite possible. Rocky squeezed his hand back, singing a contented song.
Grace looked back up at the stars but felt no yearning for them. Everything he needed was right beside him.
He was home.