Written by Darcy Ridge World brainstormed by Darcy Ridge and Hunter Fawkes Note: I started this story in January 2023 and completed it in August 2023. As a warning, this story discusses war and violence though nothing is described graphically. The violence that takes place in this story, while probably unconsciously influenced by real conflicts, is not meant to be a direct commentary or allegory to any specific war. Rather, I hope that this story illustrates the consequences of the violent actions of powerful greedy imperial states (*cough*like the United States*cough*) through the lens of a young genderfluid child and her love of drawing. This story is also a sequel to a previous story I wrote titled “Sui Generis,” but that story does not need to be read to understand this one.
Nickel’s parents worked. That was all they did really. Worked through the night in their little apartment while Nickel busied herself coloring the stars on her tablet. She liked stars. She rarely saw them on the planet Enki where the sky was blacked out by plumes of smoke and even if it wasn’t, no one would dare go out at night. So Nickel searched and scoured for images of stars on her device and drew them, nameless, on blank canvases. “Nickel,” her mother’s voice came from the kitchen. “You should come get some dinner.” Nickel glanced up to see her mother standing at the kitchen counter. The pale skin under her eyes possessed their usual soreness and her black hair was tangled around her shoulders. Nickel trudged over to the counter and placed her tablet on its surface. She watched as her mother’s gaze slipped over the drawing the device displayed. “Stars again, Nickel?” Her mother shook her head and passed her a soup bowl. Nickel scowled at the icky gray substance. “Why do we always have to eat this?” “You know why, Nickel.” Nickel did know why, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t complain. She stabbed her spoon into the bowl and watched as little flecks of gray splattered onto the counter. The specks of liquid bubbled on top of the brown surface and with the neon kitchen lights reflecting on them from above, Nickel could almost imagine them as stars glittering in the dark night. Almost. Footsteps thudded from behind her and she listened to the clunk of the chair beside her being hauled as her father’s body slumped onto the seat. He sighed. “What’s going on now, Nate?” Her mother passed him a bowl. “Still can’t figure some stuff out at the lab.” Another sigh. “How’s it going with you two?” Nickel’s mother frowned at her husband but didn’t press him to speak more. “Nothing much. Work was normal. We found a poor dog that had gotten caught in a landmine. Lost their back legs, but they’ll be okay.” Nickel stared at her bowl. “What about you, son?” Nickel startled. Her hand clutching her spoon splattered more soup onto the table. “Daughter,” she muttered. “At least for now.” “What was that?” Nickel’s father asked. She could hear his body shifting to turn toward her. “Uh, you mean daughter.” Heat flashed across Nickel’s face and her grip tightened around the spoon until the metal dug into her palm. “Right,” her father said after a few moments. “Sorry…daughter.” Nickel kept her gaze on the table, but she could feel her parents’ attention on her. “I was just doing some more drawings. You know, the usual.” “It’s the stars, Nate,” Nickel’s mother said. “I love your passion, so–I mean daughter, but don’t you want to try creating something…I don’t know…a little closer to home? It’s a bit hard for anyone to relate to stars since no one really has seen them for decades. Even when your mom and I were kids growing up on Earth, we couldn’t see the stars and it’s not any better here on Enki and that’s all you’ve known.” Nickel stared at her lap. Some soup had sprinkled onto her beige pants creating little damp circles all over her thighs. She heard her mother shift her position. “I think what your father is trying to say, Nickel, is that maybe you should vary up your drawings. Stars can feel really out of reach to a lot of people…especially with how things have been since we all came to Enki.” “I’m finished,” Nickel said, standing up. She avoided her parents’ stares. “You barely had any of your soup,” her mother said. “I’ll put it away for you for later.” Nickel nodded and ducked away, dashing to her bedroom. ~~~ Nickel tried to draw. She tried sketching the plumes of smoke that hovered above the battlefields in the morning, the dark ships that circled the murky sky every afternoon, and even the way the translucent shield above the city shimmered at night as bombs struck its surface. Nickel was eleven and knew how messy the world was, had seen and heard it firsthand. She had grown up hearing the stories of how when humans first found Enki, the wealthiest nations distributed the land between Earth’s different countries, prioritizing themselves. Yet, those countries, despite allocating the best land for themselves, found themselves wanting more. Enki had been a miracle, her father once said, an uninhabited planet that could host us after fiery rain chased us away from Earth. We had a second chance. But we ruined that because that’s all we can do as humans, let our pain ruin miracles. Nickel groaned, letting her tablet thump in front of her. A knock sounded on her door. “Hey, Nickel, can I come in?” Her father. She peered at her window, which was glazed white in order to hide the horrors outside. When she was younger, her family could change the window to display holographic images of different nature scenes from Earth pre-fiery rain, but now, as the wars went on and energy conservation became more vital, that was no longer an option. “Yeah, come in,” she replied. The door slid open and her father took a step into the room. He stood in silence for a moment. “So…what do you got there? It looks a bit like a nebula or something like that.” Nickel kept her gaze directed at the window. “It was supposed to be smoke plumes. From the bombs.” “Oh.” “I couldn’t continue it though…” Another moment of silence. Nickel fiddled with her tablet’s drawing pencil. The utensil clicked against her nails. “Nickel, I-I…” Her father broke off. “You remind me of my sister,” he said finally, his voice a whisper. Everyone knew the story of what happened to Shara Song, younger sister of Nate Song and famous scientist who had left Enki to scout another habitable planet twelve years ago only to go missing. This was the first Nickel had heard anyone compare Shara to her. She looked up at her father. His dark eyes studied the floor. The ceiling lights painted his brown skin an even warmer shade. He looked so vulnerable, Nickel realized. Her father was a leading scientist who had engineered many foods that had prevented their city from starving countless times. She had seen him present his research in person and digitally. He was an elegant speaker…just never around her. “I killed my sister,” Nickel’s father said quietly. His gaze remained directed at the floor. “I encouraged her to dream and so she left.” Nickel frowned. “I don’t get it.” Her father at last looked up and met her eyes. “It’s okay. You’re so young. It’s unfair to ask you to understand.” Nickel bristled. “I want to though.” They stared at one another. Their matching brown eyes searched and scanned the other, reaching out in the space between them, until her father’s softened. He took a few muffled steps forward and gestured at the space beside Nickel. She nodded and her father sank down on the mattress beside her. He picked up the tablet in front of her. “The truth is…I don’t want you making drawings like this. I want you to draw your stars just like my sister and I wanted to explore them…but I’m scared that if you do, you’ll forget about here and get yourself hurt. It-it’s not safe to dream in a place like this.” Nickel’s eyes began to burn and she turned away from her father and glanced at the blank window to her left. “I’m not forgetting about what’s happening here.” “Then why do you draw the stars so much?” “I-I,” she started. She didn’t know how to say that drawing the stars was her way of not forgetting. It was because of everything Nickel saw here that the stars mattered to her so much. She had overheard her mother once say that the wars on Enki were nameless because the pain and destruction couldn’t be understood through human words, and so, to Nickel, the stars became nameless, too. Nameless in a different way though. Nameless through their distance and obscurity. Nameless through their silence and beauty. Nameless through their refusal to be owned and corrupted. She could draw them over and over, knowing she could never truly understand them, but still be in awe of them anyway. “I don’t know,” she said. Maybe, she realized, in its own way, everything that had happened with her father’s sister was also nameless. Her father sighed. “Me, too.” He gave a chuckle. “I’m a scientist. It’s my job to know things and yet with you, my creative, passionate sometimes-daughter, sometimes-son who draws the stars, I’m realizing there are some things I can’t know.” Nickel released the pen in her grasp and let it drop onto the sheets. She leaned onto her father’s shoulders. “I know I’m glad you’re here.” Her father’s shoulders eased. “I am glad you’re here, too…But you need to eat, so go finish that soup!” She would continue drawing her nameless stars, but for now, she would hold onto this moment with her father without forgetting anything.
0 Comments
Written by Darcy Ridge
World brainstormed by Darcy Ridge and Hunter Fawkes Solis existed. She...no, he existed in the space between nowhere and somewhere and nothing and everything. He existed alone except for the little spheres of light that drummed the air around him and swooned from her mouth each time she took a breath. He gave birth to these fiery orbs and they twirled around her, igniting her scales and painting them red. Her talons sparked with orange and her eyes, except for their central black slits, glistened amber. Solis was the morning of the stars. And she was not alone. Candentis was there, too. His silver-scaled body remained dulled by the empty darkness that squatted between Solis’ stars and cascaded from his fangs. His icy eyes gleamed with a patience, a patience that could stand timelessly against the waves of fate that edged the two beings together. But two things were clear. Although Candentis was awed by Solis, Solis barely knew Candentis existed. So Solis continued to pour her soul into her creations. And bloomed they did. They sprouted and crowded into Candentis’ bare spaces, splintering the blackness Candentis held dear. He was invaded by the luminescence of the stars and his talons clenched, a new desire burning within him. There was something he needed to protect. And he struck. Claws scraped red scales. Brown rivers cascaded from scintillating sores. Clumps of dust shadowed the stars. Solis’ tail cracked Candentis’ body and scattered silvery crystals into the dark dust clumps, illuminating the world once again. More particles sprouted from their cuts and collided, fusing into circuiting orbs that glowered and radiated with each strike the two beasts launched. Soon, they were not alone. Slipping and crawling along the spheres were tiny beings. They slithered through vast swathes of tears that collected onto these microcosms. They clung to arching strands that brimmed with green and red treats. They chased and slaughtered one another and saved and cherished as well. So when Candentis and Solis paused to stare at their creations, the struggling ceased as for now a new balance existed. Written by Darcy Ridge Character brainstormed by Darcy Ridge and Hunter Fawkes Marietta cherished how the sun’s golden rays blanketed the snow-covered sand. She delighted in how the sprinkles of pink and orange glimmered in the writhing waves. She appreciated how as night crept ever closer, the sun made a promise to return.
On New Year’s Eve 2020, Marietta stood by herself on the boardwalk. It was not even six o’clock and the sun had already begun to set over the little town of Buchtton, Massachusetts. She had been shocked to find the beach vacated at this time, but hadn’t spent long dwelling on why. Today she needed a sunset. The year was finally ending. Of course, Marietta knew that COVID wouldn’t go away with the chime of twelve and neither would the heaviness lodged inside of her vanish, but she hungered for the hope that her adoptive fathers and little sisters appeared to possess. She craved to smile and believe a better tomorrow did exist. The wind shifted Marietta’s black hair against her cheeks and she twitched. She had come to the United States at sixteen from a small orphanage in Jiangsu Province, China. She had grown up speaking Jianghuai Mandarin and had learned English from an American woman who had taught at the institution. What had been that woman’s name? That was another thing Marietta liked about sunsets. As the sun sank beneath the waves, so could her own distress over her inconsistent memories. She had been in the U.S. for three and a half years now, but anytime she tried to recall a specific memory from her life in the orphanage, nothing would surface. The only things from her past life that Marietta could remember were her Mandarin speaking skills and the faint image of that American woman smiling at her and holding out her hand. Marietta leaned against the wooden railing of the boardwalk and let the cawing of the seagulls fill her ears. New year, she thought to herself. I can’t get lost in my thoughts again. But the woman had meant something to Marietta. She had been more than a teacher. She had been a… friend? … guardian? No, something bigger than that. “Hey, there,” a voice came from her right. Marietta swiveled her head around to see a woman standing on the boardwalk beside her. The woman wore an olive winter jacket and her dark hair was sprawled around her shoulders. The sun glinted off her brown skin and if a blue mask hadn’t been covering the woman’s mouth, Marietta would have been certain that the woman was smiling. She looked familiar. Was this the woman from the orphanage? Although they were already six feet apart, Marietta took a step back from the other person. She fiddled with the hem of her sweater. “Hi,” she murmured. “No gloves, I see,” the woman said, chuckling. “Of course you don’t need them. I’m Lily Beas. You may or may not remember me. I taught you English, among other things. You can call me Lily.” So it was the woman from the orphanage, but what was she doing here? Marietta trembled. The ground felt like it was swaying underneath her feet. “I was just thinking about you.” A sad look came over Lily’s eyes. “I know.” Lily turned toward the ocean. “You like the sunset. You always come here at this time.” Panic sparked through Marietta’s body. How did this woman know so much about her? She clenched the railing beside her and was surprised to feel the wood bend to her will ever so slightly. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m actually quite sad about what I was originally sent to do. I’ve been hearing from your fathers that you’ve been… off lately. Feeling depressed. Since you began college last year and quarantine started this March, I haven’t been able to get around to… visiting you as much as I did previously.” “There’s something wrong with me?” Marietta’s voice quivered. She wanted to run away, but for some reason her mind told her she was safe with this Lily Beas. Lily sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling depressed. It’s… complicated. The others were concerned that this was some sort of defect. We made you to be as human-like as possible, so you developing a mental illness was always a possibility in my opinion.” “You-you made me?” Marietta peered at her hands. They seemed so real. Dark green veins stretched through her tan palms and creases formed at her knuckles. Lily observed the sunset. The sun was so low now that only streaks of gold hanging in the horizon proved its existence. “Since we moved you out of our lab in Mary’s Box two years ago, we’ve been keeping an eye on you remotely. Every now and then I would be sent to visit and reboot you.” Mary’s Box. Isn’t that a jewelry store? For some reason, Marietta felt comforted by the name of that shop. She couldn’t remember ever going inside of it, but it’s name felt familiar. She let out a deep breath. “Are… are you going to reboot me now?” “No.” Marietta gazed at Lily who still faced the ocean. “Why not?” “I’m tired of this cycle. I crave for you to live instead of always returning to this moment. It’s a new year and I want you to know the truth. You find beauty in these sunsets because they’re predictable and stable. The sun will always come back, right?” Marietta gave a stiff nod. She brushed away a strand of black hair that the wind had flung into her eyes. “It’s time for you to recognize that it’s okay if not everything is like the sunset. Some things can’t be lit up by the sun and other things won’t return. You agonize over your lost memories of your orphanage, but they never existed in the first place.” A tear stung Marietta’s vision. She let go of the railing to wipe it away. Her fingers left behind a dent in the wood. Lily’s dark brown eyes met Marietta’s own with generosity, but also ferocity. “You aren’t human, but we made you to be. You can cry, bleed, laugh, eat, and do almost everything a human can. You deserve honesty.” “What’s going to happen now?” “I’m going to allow you to go home and celebrate the New Year with your fathers. They already know that I have told you the truth. Your little sisters and everyone else in the world don’t know you’re an A.I. and for now, we at Mary’s Box would like to keep it that way. We will keep an eye on you still, but we’re no longer going to reboot you. You were designed to be independent and it’s time for us to start letting you go.” Marietta noticed a tear streaking down Lily’s face and dampening her blue mask. Letting go, Marietta thought. She tilted her head toward the sunset again. The stripes of gold were still there, but sinking lower and permitting the darkness of night to creep closer. “Thank you,” Marietta said. “Thank you for being honest.” Lily nodded and bowed her head. “Of course. I will leave you now.” With that, the woman stepped away from the boardwalk, her feet barely making a sound. ~~~ “Marietta, you’re back!” her tatay exclaimed as Marietta lumbered through the apartment door. She and her little sisters called their Filipino American father “tatay” and their Black American father “dad.” At the moment, her fathers and younger sisters were seated around the living room’s coffee table playing Trouble. Rosa, eight, seemed more interested in the book she was reading, but she glanced up to smile at Marietta. The five-year-old Tsunami ran over to hug Marietta’s legs. “I’m glad to see you’re okay,” her dad said. Although a grin lingered on his face, his eyes seemed to be searching Marietta for any insecurities. “Yeah, I’m alright,” Marietta said. Tsunami gripped onto Marietta’s fingers and dragged her over to the coffee table. “You can be on my team,” Tsunami whispered. “There are no teams in Trouble,” Rosa muttered. “Now there are,” Tsunami retorted. Marietta chuckled as she squatted down beside her youngest sister. As the family of five continued on with the game, Marietta watched the darkness settle outside the living room window. The heaviness from before still moped inside of her and she knew it would take time before she accepted everything she had learned tonight, but she allowed herself to share smiles with her fathers and sisters and to feel a twinge of excitement for the coming year. Despite everything Lily Beas had said, Marietta still loved sunsets, she decided, yet she now knew how to let them go. Maybe life wouldn’t magically get better and Lily was right, some things couldn’t return, but Marietta would keep living anyways. Written by Darcy Ridge Brainstormed by Darcy Ridge and Hunter Fawkes Drawings by Hunter Fawkes “[A]mong history's greats Leonardo da Vinci is often considered sui generis—a man of such stupendous genius that the world may never see his like again” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
The light was too bright. Shara preferred the shade. The dust clung to her brown knuckles and flies flitted around her wavy black hair. Her head was bent towards the soil and her tan tunic did little to protect her back from the sun that glared down at her from above. Shara was squatting in the forest clearing, the same one she’d been visiting for the last five years. Neon purple mushrooms, which, surprisingly, were edible, dotted the edges of the open space. Her mouth watered for the sleek delectables to slip between her lips and slather her tongue with all of their juiciness. Still, Shara knew from experience that it was patience and willpower that allowed people to survive, not hastiness. Five years, she thought to herself. It had been five years since she had left Enki and twenty more since she had left Earth. She barely remembered her birth planet. She had been six-years-old when she, along with her mother and older brother, had left the globe in order to escape the fiery rain. Now, Shara was alone. She dug her fingers into the soil. She had learned long ago that the best way to preserve the succulence of these purple mushrooms was to pull the fungi at their roots. Slimy white bugs rubbed against her stiffened skin and damp speckles of silt shivered against her firm palm. With a sigh, the mushrooms came loose and she caressed her prizes in her hands before laying them at the foot of the tree. Bzzz. A green insect the size of her thumb landed on her wrist. Shara grimaced before shoving the organism away from her skin. Droplets of soil and sweat that had hung onto her body slid onto the ground. Shara yearned to lumber back to her tiny hut by the lake and let her mind slip into dreams. Days on this planet were much longer than Enki’s. Shara had spent five hours this morning trekking up and down little mountains to get to the forest clearing and she still had about twenty more hours before the day would start to dim even a little. Groaning, she twisted her body around and let her sweat-smeared back lean against the rough bark of the tree. She closed her eyes to block out the neon sunlight filtering down on her from far above. Her nose trembled at the earthy aroma of the mushrooms beside her and her mouth tingled in anticipation for dinner. A memory from Enki fluttered into her mind and Shara was grateful that it was a kind one. She had too few of those types from her life before. She was seven and had been living on Enki with her mother and brother for a year now. Her brother, twelve, was standing at the window of their apartment and pointing at something below. His short dark brown hair was disheveled from a long night of sleep and his red pajamas seemed to glow from the light of the early morning sun. “What is it, Nate?” Shara asked as she trudged over from the kitchen table where she had been munching on granola. “They’re doing some kind of experiment.” Nate’s voice was light and Shara felt like she could soar to the sky aboard his enthusiasm. She scampered over to the window beside Nate and peered down at the orange-cloaked scientists bumbling around the gray sidewalks underneath them. The scientists were a normal sight on Enki. Evacuating half of Earth to another planet had been a difficult task, but making sure everybody was able to adjust to their new environment was even harder. “Look,” Nate exclaimed. “It’s a balloon!” Sure enough, from where the scientists gathered below, a yellow balloon as large as Shara’s head surged upward and danced in the air. When it came to the level of Shara’s window, she could make out little puffs of gas sliding out from the bottom of the rubber figure. “It must be one of those new air purifiers that we were learning about in school,” Nate said. “My teacher said that us humans messed up Earth, so Enki is our second chance.” Shara didn’t understand what her brother meant. She smiled and nodded, gazing at the balloon ascending into the air. With her attention on the balloon, she could almost pretend that the gunshots in the distance didn’t exist. Shara blinked and she was back on her new planet. Alone. Her left eye felt irritated and it took her a moment to recognize that a tear was lodged in it. She stared down at the moist soil before her and the purple mushrooms beside her. Shara didn’t know how her brother and mother were doing now. She breathed in and pressured her body to stand. She scooped up the fungi on the ground and stalked across the clearing toward her brown satchel that lay on the opposite end of the enclosure. The sun glowered at her as she trudged and she had to narrow her eyes in order to see her destination beyond the light. Another memory drifted through her mind. She was fifteen and walking home from school. Enki’s sun, clouded by gray whisps, glimmered above her and colorful balloons soared in the air around her. Little puffs of purifying chemicals sprinkled the atmosphere and the balloons, every once and in a while, would bump the glass walls of the skyscrapers. The sidewalks were deserted except for a few people, mostly students like her, scuttling to get to their homes before sunset. The streets were devoid of vehicles, but lone trolleys, all empty of passengers, rumbled past every few minutes. “Shara!” Excitement burst in Shara’s heart and she twisted around to see Nate scampering over to her. His brown satchel thumped against his hip and his dark eyes were alight with pleasure, but also concern. “You’re taking the long way home again?” Nate asked, panting as he slowed down beside her on her left. “I told you. It’s not safe.” Shara fiddled with the strap of her orange backpack. “Maybe I wanted to make sure you got home, too. You stay too late at the lab.” Nate sighed. “This time though, I actually was packing up as I saw you walk by. We had another breakthrough today. Rice will grow faster than ever now. No one will be hungry again.” Shara turned her head toward the right. Gunshots rang a few streets away as the sun sank lower against the horizon. The glass of the skyscrapers shimmered to display a neon message. Shara didn’t even have to look at the words to know what they said. Fear dripped into her heart and Nate’s eyebrows furrowed. He gripped onto Shara’s elbow. “Five minutes? We can make it home in four.” The two siblings smiled at one another. Then, they ran. They scurried through the doors of their apartment building just as the first bombs landed. Back in the clearing, Shara dropped to her knees before her brown satchel. She unfastened the bag to see the various fruits and vegetables she had gathered on her way up to the site. Her fingers shivering, she slipped the mushrooms into her tote alongside her other finds. Forcing her breath to steady, she wriggled on her bag and headed down the mountain. ~~~ Six hours passed before she could see the edge of the lake her hut neighbored. The sun still hovered in the sky, but the dark green trees shaded her from its view. If her body had ached before, it agonized now. Her legs trembled underneath her and her shoulder itched underneath her satchel’s strap. Her brown face was streaked with perspiration and flies flurried around her wavy hair. She paused beside a skinny tree and pressed her right hand against its scaly bark. She didn’t care about the splinters prickling her palm. A third memory from Enki rose in her mind. She was twenty-three and standing on a platform before a crowd of scientists in orange smocks. A metallic podium stood before her and her voice bellowed through the auditorium. The late morning sun gleamed outside the hall’s glass windows. “It’s far beyond the time that we scientists should have acknowledged the violence occurring on our planet as something we can cure. We can keep purifying air, cleaning water, feeding people, but we also need to recognize why people feel the need for such destruction. My past research and my proposed solution should be a start to expanding our technologies to support more people and to bring peace to our world.” With that, Shara bowed her head, stepped back from the podium, and strode down the platform’s stairs. Nate was waiting for her at the bottom. He grinned at her. “That was amazing, Shara.” She beamed back at him. “Well, I had you to encourage me plus a whole team of assistants to help me. Do you think they’ll listen? Do you think I’ll get the funding?” Nate turned to the right to look at the crowd of scientists murmuring to one another in the auditorium. “I’m not sure,” he said in a low voice. “Everybody has been in denial for so long that sometimes it feels impossible for things to change.” “The bombs are getting better,” Shara whispered. None of the scientists liked to admit that for the past few weeks, the nightly bombings had become more destructive. Nate stared at the ground. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but my team…we’ve been looking for other habitable planets.” Shara gaped at her brother. “We’re going to run away again? It was fiery rain on Earth and now it’s war on Enki. How many planets do we humans want to ruin before we actually try to fix ourselves?” Nate sighed. “I don’t know, Shara, I don’t know.” Shara shook her head and the memory dissipated. She teared her hand away from the tree and grimaced at the blood that splattered her palm. She must have been pressing her hand harder against the bark than she intended. She continued on to her little hut. ~~~ Cooking the mushrooms was easy. She spent the rest of her day finding a place to hide her fruits and vegetables from critters and, of course, napping. She purified some lake water using the machine given to her by the Enki scientists and set up a fire so she could make herself dinner. Now, she squatted by her hearth with her hut only a few meters away from her. The sun was low in the sky and she could see birds twirling through the air as they headed home to their nests. Insects tittered in the trees and a light breeze rolled across her skin. On the other side of the lake, Shara could see the sun glinting off the wreckage of the ship she had used to arrive on this planet. She had landed safely that day. The destruction of the spacecraft had been her doing two sunrises after she had landed, after she had lied to everyone. “You were wrong,” she had wheezed through the vehicle's intercom to the Enki scientists. “This planet is not hospitable.” Then, she had destroyed her ship, praying she hadn’t made the wrong decision. Maybe if they thought her dead they would finally listen to her. Finally realize that the solutions to their problems were already in their hands. She thought back to the last time she saw her brother and her mother. They had been in their mother’s apartment, sipping cocoa together hours before Shara had headed off on her adventure. The noon sun had shimmered through the window, but instead of feeling hostile as the sun usually did, it had felt warm. Comforting even. “You sure you want to do this?” Nate asked, breaking the silence. Shara placed her cup down on the plastic table. “I’ve been training for months. I can do this.” “What about your research?” Shara peered at her lap. “I have people who will continue it.” Their mother sighed and placed her hand on Shara’s wrist. “We’re going to miss you so much, honey, but if it all goes well, maybe we’ll join you on that planet someday.” Shara nodded, but she could feel Nate’s eyes searing through her. After they had finished their drinks, their mother shuffled off to the kitchen to clean their cups. Nate and Shara had stood up and walked over to the window, the same window they had both seen that yellow balloon through all those years ago. “Take my bag,” Nate said. “I can always get a new one and I want you to have that one. I already emptied it for you.” He nodded to where his brown satchel hung on the rack by the apartment door. Shara raised an eyebrow. “You sure?” “Of course. You’re my sister.” Shara blinked and she was alone by the fire. A tear streaked down her cheek and she didn’t bother brushing it away. She picked up one of the now-cooked purple fungi that lay on top of her brown satchel and took a bite. As her teeth crunched down on the soft form of the mushroom, she observed as the sun disappeared from the skyline. Shara was alone, but maybe the world would be okay. |
AboutRead stories in a number of different mediums that are all the result of collaborations between Hunter and Darcy. [Image Description: black background with the words "Social Justice and Mental Health Resources" in white in the center /end ID]
Click image for a list of social justice and mental health resources. Archives
January 2024
Categories |