BY DR. AGONSON
Hurtling through space at speeds my mind could not fathom, and yet the distant stars would not be bothered to move a single inch. Lost in a cramped escape pod, my distant ship a smoldering wreck drifting endlessly in the unknown void, I press my face against the porthole. There is no meaning there, no signs, no hope. All there is is a vacuum, a silent desert of stars. There is no place to go, no planet to escape to, no rescue; I am alone, just one more distant little light no eye will ever see. I am all alone.
I gaze upon the crystal stars, my white breath fogging up the glass. The little cabin grows colder as space invades. This foreign sky holds no constellations for me, nor does its offered beauty, its conciliation, ease my dreading heart. I cannot see their dance, nor hear their song; their times and seasons are strange to me. My tears stick to my face. I wipe them away, but they turn to ice in my hand. My finger’s on the cold glass, and I begin forming in the foggy patch of breath three simple words: Drifting, aimless, attacked. I am alone.
A child sees a starship taking off, its mighty thrusters bellowing as it forces its haughty path into the vast and unexplored. His heart is on that ship, and he must follow it. In that time, the child knew who he was and what he longed for, but lost in the freezing wastes of its reality, he is only alone, distant, far away, shivering. Yet, in his darkness, a memory of that brilliant afterburn is still glowing in his eye. The coldness of space, like a vampire, sucks away his life while he drifts through this dark void’s endless loneliness.
An old and weathered bit of metal goes on its ceaseless course, a silent hearse lost in the endless night of space. Still, the stars outside its window have hardly changed, moved but an inch. No living eye is left to notice, though dead eyes gaze out eternally upon the depthless wastes. No new breath obscures the glass. What vapor was left left long ago. A little scrawl, known by none but him—invisible smudges against the glass. Somewhere, a life raft a coffin, this unremarked funeral sallies forth into the vast collection of stars, one among an uncountable host.
Eventually, by some odd circumstance, this debris, caught in the various pulls of diverse stars, gradually found itself in an eon long circuit. Its arrivals, well predicted on three distinct planets, were seen as a sign. Astrologers, prognosticators, and prophets all marked its movement closely, seeing it only with the naked eye, a distant glare moving through the night. It was the same glare of those thrusters long ago, for it sparked the same desire. Telescopes were made, and the people of those alien planets saw a ship hurtling past, a window, in it a face. They were not alone.
https://taletold.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/drabble-series-distant/
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Tale Told 