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Description
The first thought that hits my mind is, I should be afraid. I should be flailing, pounding my voice like a fist against the black stage curtains, even as they greedily devour each echo. I should be using up the last of my precious oxygen in a panic; even though I need it now more than ever. I should be afraid, deathly afraid.
My partner certainly is. She pounds haplessly on the thick glass window of the ship, her green eyes wide with distress. We don’t get to see much green out here. I’m lucky, I think, but nothing remotely akin to “Oh no, I’ll soon face a slow and lonely death, far from anyone I’ve ever held dear.” Her eyes are green, and I think of earth not as a home I will now never see again, but a distant jewel, a lost treasure buried in the deep clasps of a silent, dark temple. Something I would have heard fairy tales about as a kid. Something precious, something legendary. I don’t feel a horror or impending loss, more of a nostalgia, a faint connection to this artifact that doesn’t let itself become clear in my head, not all at once.
I don’t speak. My partner’s hands clench against the glass, make themselves into fists as though she could grasp me. I don’t speak, and I don’t reach for what I know is lost.
Silently whirling in the distance, in godly gold and rust streaks, is the surface of Jupiter. This world is no mere gem, more like all the gold of a lost empire, buried beneath white stardust; one skeletal sentinel looms around Jupiter’s horizon, ever vigilant over its long-dead king. I whisper to myself, “Europa.” Our mission. Survey the icy moon for signs of past or present life. It isn’t like I’m going to be completing that any time soon. The ship is farther away now, and it hangs in the void like a coda, a final statement as I move gently, so gently, out towards nothing – no, out towards everything.
I should be afraid; my partner and I were to watch each others’ backs and here she is with her back to a cold and empty metallic shell, a skin without blood, and here I am with my back to everything humanity’s ever dreamed of and feared, all at once so the emotions swirl and churn like the gases in a distant star. I should feel cold and alone and very, very exposed. Here is the universe snaking black tendrils around me, probing me quietly – much like our own towards itself, yet unique from humanity’s voracious curiosity. Here the universe quietly claims me as its own, and I have nothing, am nothing against it. I should be terrified.
I’ve drifted too far from the ship to see my partner and her green eyes any more, the last I’ll ever see of human life. But I don’t feel condemned. My harness floats loosely from a clip on the hull I can’t see, some sort of undersea plant drinking in the harsh light of a sun I dare not look at. I look down to the matching clip on my chest, barely processing the connection – or, now, lack thereof. Jupiter rolls in its great slumber beneath milk and dust, beneath goddesses and dreams, and the ship is completely obscured soon enough. The shadow limbs carry me in a cold arc about the great planet. It’s a path I’ll never be able to read, and yet I let them. I drift, and I’m not afraid.
Time passes. Space passes. The rusted relic of Jupiter is now no more than a screw, doing nothing to pin back the heavy folds of space. My ship, my partner – they’re long gone. Or rather, I am.
And then I breathe.
This is nothing unusual. I’ve been slowly and quietly burning away my oxygen for quite a while as I watched all I’d ever known drift off. But this time is different. This time no blossom of fog spreads and fades across the glass of my helmet. This time, gently sparkling, fine red particles float from my mouth. I’m no doctor, but I don’t think this is supposed to happen. My first thought is that it’s blood. But it seems too ethereal, not some kind of raw, iron-tasting spray. It’s too unearthly, too unreal to be something from the human body. It gathers like gossamer threads in the space where my helmet meets the rest of my suit, a welcome change from the feathers of frost which initially had claim over that area. Periodically, in sleek and even pulses, it fades to silver and then vanishes. I breathe again, again, carefully, intrigued by the strange celestial mist but cautious that it will slip from my view should I focus on it too intensely. I don’t want it to dart off like some scared animal, lost forever to the cold decay of time, maybe not ever real to begin with. But it is there all the same.
Something else catches my eye from my peripheral vision. In watercolor streams, my fingertips are leaking cloudy blue. I know blue, I think somewhat foggily. Blue is Neptune. But that’s not it. Not quite. Something blurs in my head, a myth I no longer have a name for, cloaked in billowing robes like the satin that spills from my fingers. It swells and dances under black-charred solar winds, and yet it is concealing something, still. It shrouds a heart I strain to read, but the pages are hazy with an iridescent white spray as the stars that surround me both close in and recede. My nameless story alights another path in my head, however, a pharaoh in his empire of gold as it wastes away. His faithful knight of ice and stone and potential. And a silver-winged intruder in a strange land, carrying… carrying… carrying what? The name, the color bleeds into the black pages of my lost book.
The stars overcome their apprehension. They draw nearer, curious, mingling with the dark hands, humming their quiet voiceless music as they trace ancient golden patterns across my body.
The red dust lingers just outside my helmet now, and only briefly do I wonder how it’s possible. I can’t see or feel my hands any more, but fine blue granules slowly disperse from where they were – were they there? The stars’ yellow art seeps through me, not warm or cold, not afraid, but alive and it flows through where there should be the heavy tang of blood and I welcome it.
The stars shudder and dance in anticipation, in welcoming, and they all have names, I know this, but their choreography is too complex for me to put words to, and I still feel something missing.
I’m sorry. Not yet.
The stars are words now and they whisper me a story in a crystalline language; the pages are bound in silver thread. But these aren’t quite the words I’m looking for. Not quite.
I close my eyes and the universe sighs around me, and I breathe with it and suddenly I know. I keep my eyes closed for another moment, just to be sure, but I can feel it sprouting inside me and I am absolutely certain this is it.
I open my eyes and there is green, blooming across the dark field, winding between clouds of distant sparkles, growing, alive, and the fairy tale is beating inside my chest and with it revolve a billion others. The color rushes through my head, my lungs, and suddenly my mind is cleared. The heart behind the streaming blue cloak was green. My story was green. Your name is Earth.
There’s more to it, though, and with new life I think steadily. You thought you were exploring the unknown void. You thought you were probing and reaching your hands out blindly, you thought you were stumbling along and you thought you might fall, and sometimes you did but something always pushed you back up. Something always drove you to keep pushing. But you always thought you were blind.
The stars in my vicinity flare up with peaceful joy, and I think back to what I said earlier. How I accused our ship of being an invader of a land in which it did not belong. The green stardust ripples in gentle celestial laughter. This is where we are from and what we are a part of and where we will return.
One cannot intrude upon one’s own soul.

Description
The first thought that hits my mind is, I should be afraid. I should be flailing, pounding my voice like a fist against the black stage curtains, even as they greedily devour each echo. I should be using up the last of my precious oxygen in a panic; even though I need it now more than ever. I should be afraid, deathly afraid.
My partner certainly is. She pounds haplessly on the thick glass window of the ship, her green eyes wide with distress. We don’t get to see much green out here. I’m lucky, I think, but nothing remotely akin to “Oh no, I’ll soon face a slow and lonely death, far from anyone I’ve ever held dear.” Her eyes are green, and I think of earth not as a home I will now never see again, but a distant jewel, a lost treasure buried in the deep clasps of a silent, dark temple. Something I would have heard fairy tales about as a kid. Something precious, something legendary. I don’t feel a horror or impending loss, more of a nostalgia, a faint connection to this artifact that doesn’t let itself become clear in my head, not all at once.
I don’t speak. My partner’s hands clench against the glass, make themselves into fists as though she could grasp me. I don’t speak, and I don’t reach for what I know is lost.
Silently whirling in the distance, in godly gold and rust streaks, is the surface of Jupiter. This world is no mere gem, more like all the gold of a lost empire, buried beneath white stardust; one skeletal sentinel looms around Jupiter’s horizon, ever vigilant over its long-dead king. I whisper to myself, “Europa.” Our mission. Survey the icy moon for signs of past or present life. It isn’t like I’m going to be completing that any time soon. The ship is farther away now, and it hangs in the void like a coda, a final statement as I move gently, so gently, out towards nothing – no, out towards everything.
I should be afraid; my partner and I were to watch each others’ backs and here she is with her back to a cold and empty metallic shell, a skin without blood, and here I am with my back to everything humanity’s ever dreamed of and feared, all at once so the emotions swirl and churn like the gases in a distant star. I should feel cold and alone and very, very exposed. Here is the universe snaking black tendrils around me, probing me quietly – much like our own towards itself, yet unique from humanity’s voracious curiosity. Here the universe quietly claims me as its own, and I have nothing, am nothing against it. I should be terrified.
I’ve drifted too far from the ship to see my partner and her green eyes any more, the last I’ll ever see of human life. But I don’t feel condemned. My harness floats loosely from a clip on the hull I can’t see, some sort of undersea plant drinking in the harsh light of a sun I dare not look at. I look down to the matching clip on my chest, barely processing the connection – or, now, lack thereof. Jupiter rolls in its great slumber beneath milk and dust, beneath goddesses and dreams, and the ship is completely obscured soon enough. The shadow limbs carry me in a cold arc about the great planet. It’s a path I’ll never be able to read, and yet I let them. I drift, and I’m not afraid.
Time passes. Space passes. The rusted relic of Jupiter is now no more than a screw, doing nothing to pin back the heavy folds of space. My ship, my partner – they’re long gone. Or rather, I am.
And then I breathe.
This is nothing unusual. I’ve been slowly and quietly burning away my oxygen for quite a while as I watched all I’d ever known drift off. But this time is different. This time no blossom of fog spreads and fades across the glass of my helmet. This time, gently sparkling, fine red particles float from my mouth. I’m no doctor, but I don’t think this is supposed to happen. My first thought is that it’s blood. But it seems too ethereal, not some kind of raw, iron-tasting spray. It’s too unearthly, too unreal to be something from the human body. It gathers like gossamer threads in the space where my helmet meets the rest of my suit, a welcome change from the feathers of frost which initially had claim over that area. Periodically, in sleek and even pulses, it fades to silver and then vanishes. I breathe again, again, carefully, intrigued by the strange celestial mist but cautious that it will slip from my view should I focus on it too intensely. I don’t want it to dart off like some scared animal, lost forever to the cold decay of time, maybe not ever real to begin with. But it is there all the same.
Something else catches my eye from my peripheral vision. In watercolor streams, my fingertips are leaking cloudy blue. I know blue, I think somewhat foggily. Blue is Neptune. But that’s not it. Not quite. Something blurs in my head, a myth I no longer have a name for, cloaked in billowing robes like the satin that spills from my fingers. It swells and dances under black-charred solar winds, and yet it is concealing something, still. It shrouds a heart I strain to read, but the pages are hazy with an iridescent white spray as the stars that surround me both close in and recede. My nameless story alights another path in my head, however, a pharaoh in his empire of gold as it wastes away. His faithful knight of ice and stone and potential. And a silver-winged intruder in a strange land, carrying… carrying… carrying what? The name, the color bleeds into the black pages of my lost book.
The stars overcome their apprehension. They draw nearer, curious, mingling with the dark hands, humming their quiet voiceless music as they trace ancient golden patterns across my body.
The red dust lingers just outside my helmet now, and only briefly do I wonder how it’s possible. I can’t see or feel my hands any more, but fine blue granules slowly disperse from where they were – were they there? The stars’ yellow art seeps through me, not warm or cold, not afraid, but alive and it flows through where there should be the heavy tang of blood and I welcome it.
The stars shudder and dance in anticipation, in welcoming, and they all have names, I know this, but their choreography is too complex for me to put words to, and I still feel something missing.
I’m sorry. Not yet.
The stars are words now and they whisper me a story in a crystalline language; the pages are bound in silver thread. But these aren’t quite the words I’m looking for. Not quite.
I close my eyes and the universe sighs around me, and I breathe with it and suddenly I know. I keep my eyes closed for another moment, just to be sure, but I can feel it sprouting inside me and I am absolutely certain this is it.
I open my eyes and there is green, blooming across the dark field, winding between clouds of distant sparkles, growing, alive, and the fairy tale is beating inside my chest and with it revolve a billion others. The color rushes through my head, my lungs, and suddenly my mind is cleared. The heart behind the streaming blue cloak was green. My story was green. Your name is Earth.
There’s more to it, though, and with new life I think steadily. You thought you were exploring the unknown void. You thought you were probing and reaching your hands out blindly, you thought you were stumbling along and you thought you might fall, and sometimes you did but something always pushed you back up. Something always drove you to keep pushing. But you always thought you were blind.
The stars in my vicinity flare up with peaceful joy, and I think back to what I said earlier. How I accused our ship of being an invader of a land in which it did not belong. The green stardust ripples in gentle celestial laughter. This is where we are from and what we are a part of and where we will return.
One cannot intrude upon one’s own soul.