a-million-suns

My heart will never forget what it__ like to fade in and out of time, to never know if one year or a thousand have passed by, to torture yourself with the idea of your soul trapped behind ice for all eternity.I know what torture there is behind ice.

But Amy," Elder says. "Space suits!

Elder mocked me for praying once, and i spent an hour berating him for that. He ended up throwing up his hands, laughing, and telling me i could believe whatever i wanted if i was going to hold onto my beliefs so hard.

I feel alone.I don't mean i feel lonely; I mean i feel alone, the same way i feel the blanket resting on my body, or the feathers of my pillow under my head, or the tight string of my sleep pants twisted up around my waist. I feel alone as if it were an actual thing, seeping throughout this whole level like mist blanketing a field, reaching into all the hidden corners of my room and finding nothing living but me. It's a cold sort of feeling, this.

Maybe one day the smears of paint Harley left throughout Godspeed will fade, and maybe the stars never will, but i'd rather have Harley's colors.

That__his__s Orion__ secret. It__ not that the ship isn__ working, that we__e never going to make it.It__ that the ship has already arrived.We__e already here! There__here__s the planet that will be our home!It floats, so bright that it hurts my eyes. Giant green landmasses spread out across blue water, with swirls and wisps of clouds twirling over top. At the edge of the planet, where it turns away from the suns and starts to darken, I can see bright flashes of light__ursts of whiteness in the darkness__nd I think: Is that lightning? In the center, where the light of the suns makes the planet seem to glow from within, I can see, very distinctly, a continent. A continent. On one edge, it__ cracked and broken like an egg, dark lines snaking deep into the landmass. Rivers. Lots of them. Maybe something too big to be rivers if I can see it from here. Fingers of land stretch out into the sea, and dots of islands are just out of their grasp. That area will be cool all the time, I think. Boats can go along the rivers, up and down. We can swim in the water.Because already, I can see myself living there. Being there.On a planet that looks up at a million suns every night, and at two every day.I want to scream, shout with joy. But the air is so thin now.Too thin.I__e spent too long looking at Orion__ secret.The boop . . . boop . . . boop . . . fades away. There__ nothing to warn about now.Because there__ no air left.My sight is rimmed with black. My head pulses with my heartbeat, which sounds as loud to me as the alarm once did. I turn from the planet__y planet__nd start pulling, hand over hand, against the tether, toward the hatch. The ship bobs in and out of my vision as my whole body jerks. I__ panicked now and fighting to stay awake. I try to suck in air, but there__ nothing there to suck. I__ drowning in nothing.

I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.A million suns.Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us.And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.But all of them are out of reach.