Kuiper jumped to his feet. The curvature of the asteroid made it so that he couldn’t see what had landed, but he could see the smoke rising up from it. His heart pounded. He ran inside, into his bedroom, and a white and gray spacesuit fell out upon him, and it smelled like dusty plastic and salt. He pulled it on him as fast as he possibly could, running out into his garden as he clicked his helmet into place. He hurried out of the interior door, then the exterior, feeling a brief rush of cold before his suit adjusted. As he hurried around the asteroid the object that had fallen came into view. In an enormous, newly formed crater there was a ship - small, personal, looked like it may have been a fighter pod but he didn’t recognize the model. It was white and gold, and the engines were glowing. It was long, and sharp, with lots of windows. Kuiper scurried down into the crater, letting the dust trail up behind him. The front of the ship had been absolutely smashed, and the door had been jerked open. Someone was inside. Without looking at them, Kuiper grabbed them, and began making his way back towards the glass dome. When he reached it, he pulled open the door and slammed it behind him, whipping off his helmet as he let the pilot fall into the garden. He fell to his knees.
Unsure of what to do, he only stared. The pilot was female, or appeared to be, at least. She wasn’t human, but she wasn’t quite identifiable as anything else either - her dark violet and black skin made her look almost Jupiterian, but Jupiterians looked much more reptilian than she did, she had thick layers of black hair in what looked almost like dreadlocks, and warmth radiating from her skin. There were vents on the side of her neck. Gills? No, they couldn’t be - there was no liquid to be found in that ship. Her body looked fairly human, only a little bit smaller, making her not quite 5 feet tall, aside from the long black alligator-like tail that was lying underneath her. Kuiper noticed that underneath the line of her closed eyes was, for each eye another line that appeared to be a second, smaller eye just underneath. He gasped and jumped as slowly, both pairs opened to reveal yellow irises and X shaped pupils, the top, then the bottom. She made a deep rasp in her throat, like she was in pain, or trying to talk. Or both. Slowly, she was able to speak.
“Kir… t’etu…” she said slowly. It was alien. Vaguely familiar, but Kuiper had never been great with languages. He shook his head.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he confessed. Slowly she spoke again, and her tone changed.
“Reu mirmea yaol?” she tried again, and then her tone changed again, “Mit mit korak chun?” Kuiper shook his head hopelessly. She was switching languages, he could tell that much. The last one sounded like maybe Plutonian, and the one before possibly Neptunian, but he didn’t speak a word of either.
“Earth,” he said to her, “I’m from Earth, I’m human.” She thought, shutting her eyes.
“Earth…” she whispered. It sounded like it took her a lot of effort. “Eh… Wo zai nali?” That sounded much more familiar, that was Chinese, he knew it. But he still couldn’t speak Chinese. She tried again. “Donde estoy? Where am I?”
“Stop, stop, that’s it!” Kuiper said. He couldn’t help but be impressed by her clearly incredible knowledge of languages - she just shot off half of his solar system in one go. He skipped her question and continued to asking her questions. “Who are you… what are you?”
“Trovin…” she breathed. Her voice still had some alien accent to it, with a round, almost slavic sounding tone. “Trovin clan... Mirsuti sub-clan… Kirakall family… Shiris personal,” she said, “Of the planet Nytodi, long way away.” Nytodi. He knew where that was. That was in section 5, a very long way away from Earth or the milky way. He had studied it once as a far off place, a speck of light in the distance, and he knew that very little was known about their people. The only Nytodians anyone in the solar system tended to know about were Plutonians, and even they didn’t hear much. That explained her knowledge of languages. Nytodians were known for their expansive memories.
She had listed off a lot of names, but he figured ‘personal’ probably meant the equivalent of a first name. “What are you doing here, Shiris?” he asked her firmly.
“Crashed,” she said simply.
“I mean the milky way. Nytodi is light years away, what are you doing coming here?” But again, she only whispered.
“Crashed…” Kuiper sighed. This wasn’t going anywhere.
“I have a device that calls people,” he said to her, “If you tell me how to contact your planet, I can-”
“No!” She cried, very loudly, very suddenly, “Don’t call them don’t call them don’t call them don’t call them!”
“Alright, alright, I won’t call them!” Kuiper said, startled at her loud shouting. She was staring up at him with horror, the slits on her neck widening and pulling closed at a rapid rate, her chest rising up and down in a panic. All four of her eyes were wide, unblinking, all four of her pupils on Kuiper. It made him squirm. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, with a hint of disgust. “Do you need food?”
“Food in my ship,” she answered, “Go out to ship.”
“I can get you a suit, like mine, so you can walk outside,” he told her, standing up, “Then… you can stay here, I guess. Until we figure something out.”
“Wait!” she said, as he stood, “What’s your name?”
“Kuiper,” he answered.
“Do you not have clan names on your home?” Kuiper did have a last name, but as soon as he thought of it, he heard a silver voice saying talking to him, a cheery light manner of speech, ‘Sylvie Sarus! I like it!’ He blinked the thought away, a chill running through him right to his core.
“It’s just Kuiper,” he answered coldly. Then he went into his room and retrieved a backup spacesuit from his closet, just in case his own ever broke. Throwing the heavy piece of clothing over his shoulder, he took it out to her. It would be far too big for her, that he knew. But for the short journey out to her ship, he knew it should be fine. As he walked back out, he noticed a small crack beginning to form in the glass dome. It looked only like a little dark spot outside on the asteroid at first, before he realized that it was, in fact, the inside of the glass reflecting itself, revealing a tear that was no bigger than his pinky. A little breeze of worry washed over him. He’d have to fix that later. For now, though, he pulled his eyes off it and handed the suit to Shiris.
“Do you know how to put it on?” he asked her, “Can you stand?”
“Yes. I am doing better. Thank you.” she said, beginning to pull herself up. It looked as though it was causing her some pain. Without thinking, Kuiper offered his hand to her but she shook her head pridefully, and stood all the way up herself. Kuiper got the impression that her moment of fear was a fleeting one, and an uncommon one at that - for the way she held herself now as she slowly and meticulously put on the suit was that of a military position, strong, humble, and perhaps embarrassed about her earlier panic.
“What air do these suits give you?” she asked. Kuiper took a moment to understand the strange phrasing, before he answered,
“Oxygen. Just like in here.” She nodded again, and put the helmet on. It was lucky, seeing how that was apparently what she breathed.
“I’ll just be a moment,” she said, and then without waiting another moment she left out of both doors to go and find her ship, and Kuiper could have sworn that when the inner one closed the crack just beside it got bigger. But it was probably his imagination.
No big deal, he thought. All around the shell there had been cracks, but he knew there would be, so he got out there and patched them up, and they never bothered him again. A minor inconvenience, at its worst.
Part of him was telling him that Shiris would likely end up much more of an inconvenience. Seeing her in the garden amongst his plants was already causing his skin to crawl. It was the same way that certain things were simply dissatisfying - a single dent in an expansive field of snow, a single blue fish amongst a school of red. It was wrong. She didn't belong here. He ran his thumb over the tiny crack and then turned around to re-straighten the plants he had laid Shiris down in. By the time he had finished making them look proper and healthy again, he could see her figure re-approaching on the horizon. He thought about what he was supposed to do about her. The self-righteous, independant part of him was declaring that she should be sent back to her ship to deal with her own problems, to get her own asteroid! It was a relatively attractive thought, but Kuiper knew enough about himself to know he probably wouldn't have the heart to do anything less than make her a cup of tea and take her into his home for as long as she needed.
At least skip the tea, the self-righteous, independant part bargained. He gave himself an uncommitted yes.
Shiris came back into the glass dome, with little white tubes filling her arms. When she got into the garden she placed them down, and Kuiper winced as his plants were crushed again. She took off her helmet and breathed in the inside air.
"Forgive me," she said, placing it down beside her, "I was anxious that it had been lost in the crash and unsure as to whether or not I would be able to eat yours. Now, you never answered my question."
Kuiper creased his eyebrows. "Your question?"
"I asked you where I was. When we met," she looked around, "Wherever it is, it's very beautiful. Are these Earth plants?"
She was much more curious and bright now, almost chipper. Kuiper only pulled himself away more. "This is an asteroid," he said vaguely, "And these are my plants. I grew them here."
She looked up. "So is that your house?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Where are the others?"
"There are no others."
That seemed to spark some feeling inside her, some suspended in midair type of feeling, but I wasn't able to tell by her strange alien eyes whether it was disappointment or relief or just surprise. She didn't question it.
"So that means you rescued me from my ship?" she moved on.
Nervously, Kuiper nodded, and Shiris got very serious.
"Thank you," she said, "I owe you my life."
For some reason he couldn't explain, that made his skin crawl even more. He promised himself he wouldn't do this, but he found himself going for it anyway, just to escape the tension. "Do you want some tea?"
"Tea?"
"It's a drink where I'm from, a hot drink. I can make some inside." She smiled with her eyes, and nodded. Kuiper lead her inside, right into the kitchen, where he immediately put the kettle on and got out some tea and one mug. He didn't particularly want any. When it was done he handed it over to her silently, placing it on the table beside her. As she drank a sip, her tail swished. Her eyes smiled again, and she drank more. It was strange how her mouth never curved upward. Maybe it was part of her being an alien.
"So," Kuiper said eventually, "I guess you still don't want me calling your people, huh?" Her eyes widened with terror.
"You cannot," she said intensely.
"I wasn't going to," he responded, "But if you can't call your own people, how are you supposed to get out of here, get back home?"
She was silent. She gave me a very long, reptilian look, both sets of her eyes unblinking. I swallowed. It was a look of helplessness - she didn't have any explanation to give him. He knew he should have taken that as a sign of untrustworthiness and kicked her to the curb, but in her defense, he had never had an explanation either. "Fine then," he said, "Stay."  Her eyes smiled, and her mouth a little too. "But there are a few ground rules. First of all, don't hurt my plants. Second, don't throw anything into the ocean across the way. And third, listen to me for this one, never, and I mean never go into the room with the silver door handle. You know what color silver is, yeah?" she nodded, "Never. And lastly..." He  grimaced, his teeth pressing together in irritation, "Stay out of my way." She looked like maybe she was hurt. He couldn't tell. "I'm going to sleep," he said roughly, then added, "Have a nice night."
He stormed off to his bedroom. It was childish, he knew that, but even minor social interaction after almost a year of isolation was enough to leave him exhausted. Normally he didn't sleep until a few hours later, but he probably wouldn't sleep anyway. He finally got to take off his suit, letting the leftover sweat on his skin air out in the pleasant and cool inside air. He crashed down on his bed. On his bedside table was a book he had been reading. It was called 'The Death Of A Pilot', a historical fiction about pilots in the second world war. It wasn't terribly well written, but it didn't matter, he dove right into it, pulling himself into the foolish conflicts of ages past, and letting all the day's thoughts of Red and Shiris and Jakka and Sylvie fall away into the dark parts of his mind. He read as many words as his mind could handle, before his head hit the pillow and he was asleep.

Getting dressed the next morning he tried desperately to convince himself that it was all a dream, but it wasn't working very well, especially since he could see the remnants of the crashing ship from his bedroom window. Nonetheless, he followed his ritual, took his shower, brushed his teeth, made his tea and went into the living room, but in his usual spot was Shiris. Her visage hit him like a knife to the heart. She clearly had some understanding that he didn’t want her there because she and all she had took up as little space as possible, with her near the edge of the couch and the blue jacket she had been wearing with the sleeves tied together and the cases of food inside it sitting just at her feet. She wore a tight, long-sleeved black shirt and matching pants. The shirt looked like it had once had some kind of insignia on it, since a single spot was cut out and in its place another patch of plain black fabric was sewn underneath. Kuiper sat down instead in the chair across from the sofa, and tried to ignore her. He drank his tea.
Out of the blue, Shiris softly spoke. “Who is Sylvie?” Kuiper choked on his coffee, giving her a look like she had said some horribly offensive slur. Instantly, rage began to bubble inside of him.
“You went into the room,” he said lowly, his lip twitching. He sprung up out of his seat, slamming down his tea on a table beside him. “How could you, I told you not to ever-”
“I didn’t go into the room!” she shouted over him. Kuiper stood very still. “You were shouting in your sleep.” she explained defensively, “I heard you, telling her to come back, telling her you’re sorry. I just wanted to know who she was.” Kuiper was pulled back into his seat. He noticed he had gotten some tea on the ground and he suddenly felt very foolish. He had no idea he still shouted in his sleep - he supposed there was no way he would be able to know. He hadn’t woken himself up shouting in several months, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still happening. A claw seemed to grab and squeeze his heart when he even thought about talking about Sylvie.
“She was…” he started, but couldn’t even get out a lie. “She’s none of your concern,” he finally told her. Shiris nodded, then glanced down at the floor. Kuiper looked to his swimming tea leaves, his gut churning. This was a big part of the reason he left Earth. All the awkwardness of other people.
“What happened to your shirt?” he asked her.
“Hm?”
“Your shirt. There’s a ripped spot, like there was a badge there or something.” Her eyes did that wide thing again, all 4 of her pupils locking almost fearfully onto Kuiper. She bit her cheek.
“It ripped in the crash,” she said.
“And you sewed it up while you were unconscious?”
“I think maybe that’s none of your concern.” Her voice flipped very fast, and she sounded as though she were defending herself in a criminal investigation.
“Alright,” Kuiper said. Her top eyes blinked at him, and her bottom ones looked down shamefully.
“Sorry,” she said, “Listen, I think… I get the impression you don’t want to talk about yourself and I don’t either so I think trying to make small talk about our personal lives is an… unwise decision. But… if I’m going to be stuck here we will have to live with each other so… we should talk about something else.”
Kuiper’s gut wrenched again. “Who said you’re stuck here?” he asked, “You’re the one who said we can’t call your people, I don’t see how that’s my problem.”
“You said I could stay here, if you’re revoking that now-”
“I’m not, I’m not.” Kuiper became vaguely aware he was beginning to come off like a jerk. He put his tea aside, onto the table. “What did you have in mind? But I should warn you, I’m not terribly social.” She smiled with her eyes.
“Anything you like!” she said, scooching forward, her tail swishing. Kuiper exhaled. Well, so far he had been talking for a few minutes and he wasn’t in excruciating pain yet. Actually, however much he hated to admit it, it was a pretty okay feeling, having another real living person across from him, only without the consequence involved with talking to people on Earth. She was sort of like an imaginary friend. If he screwed up, she could call someone, go away, and she’d go back to Nytodi and they would never ever see each other again.
“I’d rather show you,” he said, standing, “Come on.” He went to his room and got his own suit and instructed her to put on the one she’d used before. He tried to teach her how to turn on the comm system between the suits but she seemed to know, so they both put on their helmets and went outside. It was about a mile’s walk to where he was going, over the span of which she asked a lot of questions that he brushed off in various ways. Her episode of defensiveness seemed to have gone entirely, and she was practically skipping in the low gravity.
When they approached it, Kuiper told her, “Might I recommend you turn on your outer microphones so you can hear what’s going on outside. It’s not quite as realistic, but… I still find it pleasant.”
“What’s not as real-” she was cut off when he saw where she was taking her. With awe she whispered something in Nytodian, and he smiled, just a crack. Before them was a cracked and rocky shore with tall, arching rocks that, in proportion to the planet, were mountains. The plain gray dust had been turned a silver as shimmering and as bright as solid iron by the tossing pitch black water that churned blow, the infinite galaxy reflecting off of its surface and being thrown, white and foaming, into the rock. The ocean of night roared out its ongoing song, in a constant battle with itself as it was pulled back and forth, throwing its childish tantrum against the ageless mountain statues that lined it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Kuiper, staring at the water, “How is the water moving if there’s no lunar tide? Well, there is no lunar tide. It’s more of a… universal tide, I guess. The gravity of the planet is so low in comparison to other extraterrestrial bodies that even passing within 10 light years of something like a star is enough to pull the water outward. If this place ever passes too close to something, the entire ocean will be ripped off and sucked out into space,” he explained.
“How is it not ice on a cold place like this?” Shiris gasped.
“Ah, good question. It’s got an extremely high concentration of sodium which makes it very hard to freeze. I… only know because I’ve analyzed it before, once or twice.” She let out a sigh, and stepped slowly closer to the water. Kuiper wished he could see the look on her face, but all he could see was the helmet and the suit, right up next to the shore. The water pulled in and splashed her boots. With a gasp, she jumped back.
“It’s okay,” suid Kuiper, “The suits are waterproof.” He then added, with a hint of a smile, “That there was just the pull of something very far away, coming from behind where you’re standing,” he said excitedly. He had forgotten how much outer space used to excite him, and how much he used to love talking about it. Once he had started, he found it was hard to stop. “And the best part is, we have no idea what it was! That could have been a neutron star, or a gas giant, o-o-or an extremely distant black hole, so far away we could never trace it! I’ve often thought that if we could replicate this idea to have more precision, we would be able to map more of the universe than we’ve ever dreamed!”
“That’s incredible!” agreed Shiris, “And you could use the angle of the spike in the liquid to detect whether it was a distant, powerful object or a close up weak object by detecting whether or not the attraction in the liquid was generalized or specific!”
“Yes!” agreed Kuiper passionately, “My God, I haven’t been able to talk to someone about this nerdy kind of stuff since…” he trailed off, his smile fading. For a split second he could see through the spacesuit to another girl, and she had red hair, falling around her shoulders, and green green eyes, a wide smile.
Kuiper shut his eyes. No, he said to her. Not right now. He was having a good time, arguably the first good time he’d had in years. He didn’t want the memory of her to ruin it for him again. He kept his eyes closed until they hurt, until tears welled up, and then opened them. Shiris was in the suit again.
“Say, how’d you learn English so well?” he asked, “I mean, I know Nytodians have incredible memories, but why English?”
She took a moment to answer, seeming to think about it for half a second. “Personal project,” she answered, “I’ve always had a fascination with your solar system, so much life, so much diversity. I decided to teach myself all the most widely spoken languages for each of the planets and their moons, just in case I was ever able to get my way out here.”
“And is that what this is? Your vacation?” Kuiper laughed.
“Uh… yes, I guess it is.”
“Some vacation,” he said with a snicker, “Stuck with a stranger on an asteroid.”
“A kind stranger on a beautiful asteroid,” she retorted, “I don’t mind so far.” Kuiper bit his cheek. He felt his head getting hot, and he was glad that his helmet could hide his face.
“Come on,” he said. He walked towards the water and then fell down to his knees.
“What are you doing?” asked Shiris.
“Hang on,” he answered. Carefully, slowly, he walked on his knees onto the water, only he didn’t sink in. The surface of the water broke but he only sank an inch, where the blackness bounced him gingerly up and down. From there, he cautiously placed one foot onto the water, and then pulled up his other. His boots were entirely submerged and he had to frantically wave his arms to attempt to get balanced, but once we was he allowed the water to turn him and grinned towards Shiris, who was laughing into the comm.
“How are you-” she began, “Right, the high sodium concentration! That’s incredible!”
“Well, come on,” said Kuiper. Shiris was still. Carefully, he reached out to her. “Come on!” With a laugh, she took his hand. Even though the thick, protective fabric of two space suits, her hand was the closest, warmest thing he’d felt in a year, nothing like a mug of tea between his hands. She walked onto the water, wobbling, shaking, and then she fell, and they both toppled over. They swam and bounced in the water, they splashed each other, and they laughed and laughed and laughed. There was nothing on Earth or on his asteroid like it.
When they were done they both went back inside, and Kuiper never even noticed how much the crack in the glass had grown since he had gone.

When he had come back in and taken off his suit, he went into the living room to find his projector telling him that he had a voicemail, and his chest instantly tightened back up like a wind-up toy. It was from Red. She hated leaving voicemails. A voicemail from her meant it was too personal to put in a message and too frightening to call about. Shiris said something, but Kuiper hardly heard.
“I have to hear this,” he said. Shiris understood, and stepped outside the door. Kuiper took in a long breath, and let it out even more slowly. His heart pounded.
“Play voicemail,” he commanded. Red, in her holographic form, appeared in front of him. She was standing. Her face was serious.
“Kuiper,” she said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you in person, I did… I did try to call. I mean, not as in I tried and the machinery wouldn’t go through, as in I tried but I couldn’t seem to-” She was talking fast, so she forced herself to take a breath. “Listen,” she said, “I… I am your best friend. I am never going to stop waiting for you, waiting to… to talk to you, to hang out with you, to spend as much time with you as I possibly can. But… I can’t be suspended like this anymore. I’ve…” Her hand ran through her hair and she tripped on her words, “I’ve got court cases, Kuiper, and-and a girlfriend and a home. I can’t keep… calling like this, because… because this isn’t something I can get you out of. So… I’m sorry if you feel like I’m abandoning you but that’s not my intention, I just don’t want to waste any more time doing something that’s only putting both of us in more pain.” Her voice got softer, and Kuiper hung his head, wishing she could touch his face, hold him. She was made of light, she couldn’t. “It’s up to you now, but I ask that before you spend the rest of your life here, or decide to end it short… think of Sylvie for me. Think of how you felt and how much you loved her, and then remember that I love you just as much.” Her eyes flashed down to the ground, then looked directly up. Miraculously, they matched with Kuiper’s, as though she could see through time and space. “I’ll wait for you. Always.” Then, just like that, she was gone. All gone.
Kuiper’s eyes shut and his head fell down to his chest. The silence of the air felt like knives. In that moment, he could feel every inch of empty space around him, every moment he’d spent with no one around him, with nobody caring, nobody listening. He thought about how he used to talk to freely with Red, being a kid with her, just them against the world. It was funny how she seemed to turn everything into a valiant and inspiring struggle, everything from her court cases to her personal opinions. When it was the two of them, they were the avengers of the marginalized and oppressed, they were the mighty and the bold. Now it was just him, breathing fast in a ditch, with the shadows of the barrels of the guns from the enemy soldiers being cast down by his feet.
He rubbed his eyes. He didn’t much feel like crying, so he ran his hand through his hair and rolled his shoulders back, picking a spot at the wall to stare at as his head shouted ‘alone’ again.
He stepped out into the kitchen. Shiris was waiting there. She had heard everything. A cup of tea was sitting on the counter. She picked it up and handed it to him, her eyes emotionless and militant. With a nod of thanks, he took it, and drank it.
After he was done, he went into his room. They didn’t talk for the rest of the day.
 

 Kuiper felt especially awful that night. It wasn’t uncommon for him to have nightmares, but they were usually vague, metaphorical, things like watching Sylvie fall down a bottomless pit or watching two planets crashing into each other. The sort of dreams that didn’t wake you up screaming, they just left you staring at the ceiling with a horrible taste in your mouth and a feeling as though everything you’d ever done was a mistake.
But those weren’t the dreams he had tonight. These dreams were graphic, brutal, painful. He could have sworn he could feel it there, he could feel himself coughing up blood, choking as it launched from his throat, feel the searing burn as people drove knives through him and cut him into little pieces. He could just barely make out the faces of those who were doing it, rugged faces, dark faces, familiar faces. Red, Kovrus, Telphie, Maya, his mother, his father. And delivering the final blow was a ferocious face, surrounded by red hair, a pair of flaming green eyes, a horrible wet, bawling, crying, screaming rage.
She stabbed him in the heart. In a pouring sweat, he woke up.
As he got dressed he found his muscles were sore, and his head was swimming as though he had some kind of cold. It was possible that Shiris had brought with her some Nytodian pathogen she had an immunity against and he didn’t, he thought to himself. But it was also just as possible, maybe even more so, that he just felt s***ty. He checked the time. 3:00 AM, not that it mattered much here, but it was early. He decided to deviate from his morning routine and float down the hall, teeth unbrushed, tea unmade, and enter the room with the silver handle, to see if maybe it could make him feel a little better. When he stepped inside, he shut the door behind him.
Shiris woke up later than he did, and this time, it was she who had been shouting in her sleep. When she woke up her hands were gripping the couch and her breathing was heavy, with all four of her eyes wide and staring upwards towards the ceiling, with images of stars and space suits in her mind. She felt like she was soaked, so she stood up and began to walk around the house in search of some way to clean herself. Sure to skip both the room Kuiper went into to sleep and the room with the silver handle, she went from room to room until she found one with what may have been some kind of cleaning system, composed of a porcelain tub and an overhead faucet that seemed to be controlled by a knob just below it. On her planet, it was customary to step briefly into a pod full of water that was suspended by a gravity field - but this would have to do. Once she had showered she put her clothes back on and stepped back out again, and figured it would be a good idea to dry off in the air ‘outside’ - that was, outside the house, with all the beautiful green Earth plants. She had some ‘breakfast’ (which was, as always, the flavorless white paste from the white tubes she had originally brought for her voyage) and then stepped outside.
She came upon a horrible sight.
In the glass dome that held the air in place was a crack - not just a small crack, no, but a long, spider-web, lightning shaped crack that was spreading itself like tree roots even as she stared, dragging itself over the glass, taking out the air little by little. Already, it encompassed nearly half of the entire dome. How had it possibly grown so fast? Easy. The abyss of space outside was pulling it apart, more and more every single second. Already, the air was probably running out. In horror, she ran inside.
“Kuiper!” she cried out. She checked every room periodically, starting with his bedroom, and then continuing in rapid succession through each of the four or five other rooms in the house, slamming each door open and then slamming it shut, excluding, of course, the one with the silver handle, up until the silver-handled door was the only one left.
She hesitated only for a second as she put her hand on it. She needed to save him.
The door burst open.
“Kuiper, there you-!” She said again, but was cut off when she saw how strange the room was. All around the room were items of all different kinds, it didn’t seem to matter what they were, books, toys, blankets, kitchen appliances, knick-knacks, trophies, photographs - all covered in a thick layer of dust and spaced out on wooden shelves like they were each priceless artifacts. The floor was white carpet and the walls painted meticulously to look like wood, and the old fashioned light on the ceiling made it clear that someone had gone through a lot of effort to make it look like an old Earth home. Hanging on the wall at the front of the room were several pictures, some with Kuiper in them, some with others, but all of them with one Earth girl with pale skin and green eyes and orange hair, grinning at the camera. On a very old and boxy television there was some grainy video playing, where the same girl from the pictures was laughing in front of a backdrop that looked like the surface of Mars, telling whoever was behind the camera how excited she was to be on vacation, grinning, jumping up and down, and laughing big hard laughs until her face was red. In the center of the room, watching, was Kuiper.
He turned around, and popped up like a shot.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked lowly, his heart pounding.
“Listen, I know you told me not to come in here, but there’s something you need to-”
“Get out, get out!”
“Kuiper, please, you’re not listening!”
“I said get out!” He put his hands on her shoulders and he pushed her, with alarming strength. She let out a whimper of pain as she fell to the ground. She only really saw now how much bigger he was than her, and recalled how much stronger humans were than Nytodians by default. He wasn’t listening, and if he wanted to overpower her, she didn’t stand a chance.
“Kuiper, listen to me!” she said putting her hands up, “I didn’t go in there to invade you, I went in there because something’s wrong with the glass outside. If we don’t start figuring out a way to get out of here, fast-”
“All I did for you!” Kuiper continued at the top of his voice, taking two grand steps closer to her. His heart was pounding in his chest, in his temples, in his throat, “I gave you my home, I let you in when you had nowhere else to go, and what did I ask you to do?! I asked you to leave me one scrap of privacy, one… one hint of the life I used to know, and you couldn’t even f***ing manage that! You f***ing b****!” His voice tore at his throat, screaming at her as loudly as he could. His body had been taking over, and he couldn’t see her starting to cry, couldn’t hear her begging for him to listen. All he could see, all he could hear and smell and taste and feel was flashing lights of red, a bloody taste, blaring sirens filling the air, crying out, intruder, intruder, intruder! He buried his face in his hands, trying to drown out the noise.
“You know what?” he said to her, starting to walk towards the living room. “That’s enough. You’re going back to Nytodi, whether you like it or not. I want you out of my house, I want you off of my asteroid, I want you out!” He changed his attention to talk to his projector, “Find the contact information for someone from the Nytodian military,” he commanded it. Shiris’ eyes went horribly wide, and her breath picked up to a rapid rate in her chest.
“No…” she whispered. She scrambled to her feet, “No, I can’t go back! Don’t, don’t do this to me!”
“What’s the matter, Shiris?!” he shouted back, “Not in the mood to talk to your own people?! Rather be alone, so that you can pull yourself back together?! Having an anxiety attack at the thought of interacting with the outside world again, yeah, if only I knew that feeling!”
“If you would just look outside for a moment, you would see that I had just cause-” she tried desperately.
“No, there is no just cause!” he responded immediately, “There is no just cause for you breaking one of the only rules I gave you when you were the one who decided to come in here and ruin everything I had in the first place, destroy any image of safety or security I’ve managed to construct over the time I’ve been living here, but go ahead, tell me about your just cause!”
“I crashed!” she shouted back, “It had nothing to do with you, I was just trying to find something to land on so I didn’t die in space!”
“Maybe you should have died in space!”
A horrible silence hung between them, and Kuiper could immediately feel the terrible thing he’d done in his chest, and in the look in Shiris’ four eyes when she said, in a soft and powerful voice:
“Maybe you should have let me.”
With a remarkable speed she got a space suit and pulled it onto her body, mumbling something about going to fix her ship. Then, with a slam of the door, she was gone. Kuiper hung his head. He thought about the moment where she took his hand and they both walked on the water, and how close he had felt to her.
All gone.

 After a little while passed he decided that after all this he might as well have seen what she was talking about. He stepped out of his house and looked outward into the glass. With very still eyes he saw that the spider-web of cracks had encompassed more than half of the glass, encroaching on two thirds of it. Kuiper wanted to feel worried or upset or angry or frightened or something, but he didn’t. He just went back inside.
As he drank his tea, he could see out the window that the crack was growing at an alarming rate. Maybe Shiris was angry and slammed the door, making the glass dome break more quickly. Maybe the suction from the empty space outside was pulling the crack open faster now that it had more surface area. It didn’t really matter how it had grown so quickly, but Kuiper predicted that at this rate it would probably blow within the hour. His tea leaves swam in his tea. He could hear his mind screaming.
What the Hell are you doing, Kuiper? You’re about to die! Find a solution, make an effort, Hell, panic if you have to, but don’t just sit there! Do something! Feel something! Anything! You can’t just die like nothing happened, and get sucked out into space without anything more to say about it than the damn projector!
The part of his mind he was yelling at didn’t answer. It couldn’t. It was dead. Dead dead dead, dead like a limp frog on the dissection board of a high schooler. He had absolutely no feeling, no commentary, nothing but the lack of substance enveloping him like a black hole. When the glass broke he wouldn’t die like a living being. He’d just get crushed like a piece of furniture.
All he could think of as he watched the crack in the glass make its way towards the ground was that he wished more than anything that in his final moments, he could cry.
And then,
Crash!
The dome was broken. No air, no gravity. His house was pulled apart in a second, the roof coming off, the wood splintering, the gravity being launched away. He tried to breathe, to see, but there was nothing. The freeze of space flowed through his fingers, up his arms, and straight into his heart. It hurt like Hell. When he saw his house falling apart beneath him, he could feel the fear involved with losing it, the fear was all back, running through him, and when he saw the room with the silver handle falling away into the black abyss he tried his best, through the searing pain, to extend his arm and reach it. His lungs screamed for air. All he could feel was pain pain pain and he didn’t want to die, no, he didn’t want to die!
But who would save him, he thought. Like a film roll he could hear in his head, one by one, all the people he had once loved leave him behind, “not even for me???” “I can’t be suspended like this anymore” “Maybe you should have let me.” More poured down on him, his father, his mother, his friends, his co-workers, “Talk to us, Kuiper,” “I just don’t know how to help you,” “Come on, Kuiper. It’s time to get over it.” “I’m sorry about all this,” “You’ve been gone for so long, I just figured you didn’t want to talk to me.”
They talked and they talked and they talked and then they stopped.
The cold wrapped around him. The pain was gone. He could see, in the dark, clarity, as his final goodbye, written on a paper that was crumpled up on the bedside table, sitting in the moonlight, echoed gently in his head.
“I’m sorry, Kuiper. I love you more than anything, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. This isn’t your fault, and the time I spent with you has been and will always be the best time of my life.
Yours forever,
Sylvie.”
His eyes froze over and the stars went dark.

 Kuiper’s eyes opened to a mass of blurry outlines and vague shapes.
If this was supposed to be some kind of afterlife, it wasn’t terribly impressive.
For a moment, he could feel almost nothing physically. All his skin felt numb and bloated, like his entire body had gotten frostbite. Then, as it all began to warm at once, he felt a pain set in, like someone was poking him with a needle on every part of his body. The pain was awful but all he could feel was a shocked relief. He was definitely alive.
He let out a noise, any noise he could, and a strange purple and black shape in front of him got a little bigger, or maybe a little closer. He thought maybe it was speaking, but it sounded like it was underwater. A few sentences came out, but he heard the word ‘Kuiper’ somewhere in there. He blinked hard, and the shape began to take form. There were two, no four points of light, four eyes, a face, a head, a neck. It was Shiris. When he could place her appearance, he knew it was her voice too.
“Shiris?” he whispered. His voice sounded hoarse. She talked again, said his name again, but the rest was garbled. He struggled to hear her.
“-Kuiper, you’re back on my ship. I was able to seal the door between the pilot’s seat and the inner chamber, so we should be safe in here, but there’s not much air left. Did you call my people?”
Kuiper blinked heavily, trying to process the question. “No…” he finally whispered, “No you said… y-you were upset…” he slowly remembered.
“No, that’s alright.” She sounded relieved. He could see and hear her well now, so he tried to move. His entire body stung more, and he winced. “The communications system here should be functioning fine, I can send out some sort of signal.”
“No,” Kuiper objected. He propped himself up where he sat. “No, no distress signals, just hang on,” he told her, “What happened?”
She leaned back. “I knew the glass would break, so once I closed off this part of my ship I went back with a suit. But I also knew you were too stubborn to leave, so as soon as I saw it break I rushed in to get you, managed to get the suit on and bring you back to the ship. It wasn’t hard with so little gravity. You were only out in the open for a few seconds, a minute max.”
“That should have killed me,” he said.
“Well, it didn’t. Must have been the rest of the atmosphere you made, still dwindling around a little longer. Or, maybe, it was just a miracle,” she offered, looking down to the ground.
Kuiper looked right at her. “I don’t believe in miracles,” he said lowly, “Nothing divine happened, you saved me.” She glanced upward with two of her eyes, then back down, “Looks like I’m the one who owes his life now.” She laughed, a soft sort of laugh.
“Nonsense. We’ll call it even,” she declared. Kuiper had no desire to fight her.
“Thank you,” he said. She didn’t answer that.
“So, what do you say?” she asked.
“To what?”
“I’ve got a working comm system, and I don’t think either of us want to die here. Should I send out an anonymous distress signal, sure to be found by strangers in the nearby area?” she asked, “It would get us out of here. We could get a little help, fix up this ship, and then we could be on our way. I plop you down on a slightly more hospitable asteroid and we’re right back where we started.” Kuiper blinked. It was a foolproof plan. But he could hear in the tone of her voice that she found the prospect of reversing all the steps she’d taken here very disappointing, and frankly, he felt the same. But really, what else could he do?
“We could take the ship together,” he suggested. She looked at him.
“And do what?” she whispered. Good point. He shifted where he sat, glad to feel the pain of his cold skin beginning to ease. He moved his fingers.
“You’re right,” he told her. He wasn’t really interested in running off to travel the universe, trying to run from everything some more. Because really, would it have been any different from how it had been with her on the asteroid? All that would have changed is the object whizzing through space.
“What if-” she started cautiously, “Just… what if … we called one of our homeworlds?” she asked. Kuiper looked up, a panic already coming upon him at the mention of it, but he made a point to diffuse it. It was just a hypothetical.
“Alright,” he said, trying to push himself a little more up the wall to be in a more comfortable position. “You first. What would happen if we called Nytodi?” She let out a long sigh.
“They’d probably send a few ships out to find me, make sure you got where you were trying to go, and… after bringing me to a hospital, to make sure I was uninjured and free of extraterrestrial pathogens… they’d send me home. No harm no foul, as I’ve heard your people say.”
“Then why can’t you go?”
She leaned back against the metal wall of the ship, her eyes facing dully forward, staring into nothing. Eventually she glanced down, grabbed the front of her shirt where the hole was, and asked him, “You see this hole, here? I lied to you about it. It didn’t just tear. I tore it,” she began to confess, “There used to be a badge there, given by the Nytodian government and labeling me as a Toral. That’s… sort of like a general, I guess, only it wasn’t a fighting position, it was more like an exploratory leader. I guess a better comparison is a captain. That’s why I speak your language, and how I could rescue you so quickly. I trained very hard to get where I was.” She breathed in and out, slowly, and while she exhaled she said, “But… I guess it wasn’t hard enough. My very first mission as captain was to take a group of Yisats, a much lower ranking, and teach them how to safely walk across the hull of the ship. I was cautious, I was smart, I had everything in order. But when we finally got out there…” She swallowed, and lifted her hand to rub her face. Her voice shook like she might have cried, but she controlled it well. “There was some kind of malfunction in the suits, the magnets on the boots didn’t work. One nasty jerk of the ship in the opposite direction and half of them went flying into space.” Her bottom two eyes were crying now, and her top two were looking up like they were trying not to join in. “Thirty one men and women were lost, two of them were my friends, and one of them was my niece,” she whispered, “And for half a lightyear the comm was still on… and I could hear them, I remember…” Her head fell into her hand, “I remember. Every scream of panic, every sob of anguish, every apology they desperately sent to their family members, I remember it all. What I wouldn’t give for your human memory, Kuiper. I wish I could never hear their voices again.”
Kuiper was still, just watching her. Very efficiently she had managed to stop crying, wiping her eyes and regaining her military look. “Your people can’t blame you for that,” he said. She shook her head.
“They don’t,” she answered, “It’s just me. I couldn’t stand to look their families in the eyes and tell them what had happened, I couldn’t stand to look any Nytodian in the eye at all. So… I ran. Like the coward I was, I ran.” Kuiper wished he had something to say to that, some brilliant phrase to turn the equation around, but he had nothing to offer her. Looking down, he allowed her to continue.
“What about you?” she asked, “What will happen if you return to Earth?” His heart skipped a beat.
“Same,” he confessed, “Check me out, take me home, ditto ditto.”
“Well then, ‘ditto ditto’ to your earlier question,” she answered. Her four eyes stared him down, and he started to feel even less comfortable than he had before. He had back up plans upon back up plans for what to do in exactly this occasions, webs and webs of lies, but they all slipped from his heads as, with his eyes on the ground, he found himself unable to do anything but tell the truth.
“You asked me who Sylvie was,” he began, “Sylvie was… my girlfriend of six and a half years and she was the love of my life. And she… hung herself.” Now that the words left his mouth, material and solid, it really began to feel real, more real than it ever had. But strangely, he wasn’t upset. He breathed out, and found that his throat was full of tears. He held them inside. “About two and a half years ago, with an extension cord. I came home from work and I just found her there, dead. I-I mean she had always been depressed, I knew that as soon as I fell in love with her, but… I don’t know. I guess I convinced myself that if I was a good enough boyfriend her depression would just… stop.” He laughed weakly, “I guess that’s not how it works, huh?” Shiris was giving him a strong, sad look.
“I guess not,” she answered.
“Everything I did reminded me of her,” he continued, shaking his head, “Everywhere I went, the people I talked to, the buildings I saw, and then it was the ground I walked on and the air I breathed, and suddenly no matter where I was in the solar system all I could think about was how much I missed her, so, I… I went away. I found a place where I could be alone… where no one could try to be sympathetic and sweet and tell me… sorry for your loss,” he spat out those words like they were vulgar and insulting. He shook his head. “I’ve never told anyone… any of this,” he confessed. She raised her eyebrows.
“And I’ve never told anyone any of what I’ve told you,” she answered. The air swelled as Kuiper shut his eyes. For the first time in a very long time he felt like he could breathe, really breathe, his mind, his soul, in and out, freely. His entire body felt relaxed and pure and perfect, and nothing his tea or his plants or his ocean could do ever really replicated it. Eventually, Shiris spoke. “So,” she said, looking down at the cold metal floor. Something in her eyes told Kuiper she felt similar, if not the same. “What now?”
Kuiper thought about what he wanted, what he really wanted, and for a moment, all he could see was Sylvie. But then, he looked behind her, he pushed her away, and there was still a bright blue sky, the soft green grass, the air on Earth that smelled like flowers and joy and summer vacation, it was all still there without her. So was Red, he saw her too, and Jakka, and Telphie and Kovrus and Maya, all smiling, all in front of an old wooden house with his mother and father waiting for him outside. He thought of the exact smell of his hometown, like the ocean and ancient oak trees, and he knew that even with her gone, that was the same. “I think…” he began cautiously. The tears in his throat burst forward with a whimper, and he spoke in the manner of a child, “I think I want to go home.”
Shiris smiled, wide and sad, with her mouth, not just with her eyes. “You know, Kuiper,” she said, “That doesn’t sound like a half bad idea.” A pause lasted between them before Shiris made a sudden movement to a set of alien controls with a large screen at the front of the room. She hurried over to them, and pressed a series of buttons, before she pressed a final one and on the screen appeared a name in foreign letters, and a picture of a black planet. She took a breath and spoke very quickly in what must have been Nytodian. The only part Kuiper understood was that she said her full name, as she had told him when they’d met. Then, she pressed a few buttons and on the screen appeared another foreign word, and a picture of a blue and green planet that made Kuiper’s heart pound with childlike eagerness. She looked at him, and then nodded to the screen. Trying to calm his heart, he swallowed, then in a firm voice, he spoke.
“This is Kuiper Sarus. I am stuck on a disabled Nytodian vessel at spatial coordinates that will be sent to you. Please consider this a distress signal. We’re running out of oxygen and we don’t have much time. I repeat, please consider this a distress signal. Sarus out.” She pressed a button, and the deed was done.
“It should take an hour or two for it to reach either of our planets, but the comm on this ship is pretty fast,” she said. She shifted her position near the control panel, “But… we only have about 12 hours worth of air from the suits, your suit and mine. If nobody comes by then…” Kuiper nodded.
“I think we should sleep,” he said, “Better than just waiting here.” Shiris nodded back at him. There was a pause between them before Shiris spoke again.
“Kuiper?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry about the things I said and about going into the room. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“Yeah, well, I forgive you. I mean, I was the one who started it in the first place, I never should have-”
“Kuiper,” she said, cutting him off, “I forgive you too.” The words sat very well with both of them, and they both felt very suddenly like even if they died tomorrow, things were still much better than they were.
“Goodnight, Shiris,” Kuiper said.
“Goodnight, Kuiper.”
With his eyes closed, before he slept, Kuiper considered the probability of what was about to happen. If he was still anywhere close to the last place he was when he had last gone over the constellations and checked, Earth was significantly closer to him than Nytodi, but Nytodian ships were also much faster than Earth ships. However, they were both capable of past-light speeds, meaning that they both could probably be there in a few hours if they sent their reasonably fast ships, maybe not even their fastest. That brought up another good point: who would show? He didn’t know how the Nytodian government functioned, but he knew that as far as Earth was concerned, the EFS didn’t like putting things on hold, especially for a few strangers. They’d probably be minimalistic, one or two scout class, maybe, but they’d send someone. I mean, the only thing the EFS hated more than going out of their way was letting civilians die. It’d wound their pride too much, they’d have to send someone. He hoped. Unable to think about math and logic any longer, he went to sleep.

“Kuiper!” Kuiper was vaguely aware of somebody calling his name, and confused, he opened his eyes. His first thought was ‘this isn’t my room’, but as soon as he recalled where he was the blanks filled themselves in. He saw Shiris, who was sitting by a little circular window. “Kuiper, wake up! Look!” He rubbed his eyes and, with a wince, pulled himself over to the window, and looked up. His heart fell. Outside he only saw lights, lights of all colors, lights like always, and he fell back.
“Just the stars,” he said, disheartened. But Shiris was making that wide-eyed look again, and her hand was gripping the side of the window.
In a hushed voice, she said, “Kuiper… I don’t think those are stars.” Confused, Kuiper looked up again, and in a second he knew what she was talking about. The stars looked different, the patterns were all wrong, and the lights were much brighter and much more varied in color, and it came to him that those were not stars. They were ships. The frontal lights of dozens, maybe hundreds of all different classes and all different types of ships.
As soon as he realized it the controls and the screen began to make little alert noises, blinging like mad, and in a rush Shiris pressed a few buttons, apparently opening up the transmissions, and a thousand voices began to speak. Some were in English, others in Nytodian. Kuiper’s heart began to pound like a beating drum and a warmth filled up his chest as he picked out the words and the voices he knew, coming in by the dozens on the comm.
“This is Jennifer Red, responding to Kuiper Sarus’ distress signal. Kuiper, do you read?”
“Jakka Jaffora here, Kuiper, if you’re there, say something!”
“Kuiper, it’s us, honey, it’s your parents, please, say something!”
“Kuiper, it’s Telphie, if you’re down there-”
“This is Tovrus Blie responding to the distress-”
“Maya Sopher, Kuiper, where are you?”
“That’s Red!” Kuiper explained, grinning “And mom and dad, oh my God, they came! And, Tephie… Tovrus… Maya… my friends, how do I answer?”
Shiris was grinning too, “Hang on, one moment!” She pressed a few buttons, and then gave an excited answer, speaking very fast in Nytodian, and all the Nytodian transmissions began to answer, and she listened close.
“Shiris!” Kuiper objected.
“Sorry,” she responded, and pressed more buttons, then nodded at him, “Go ahead. You’re talking to all of them.”
“Guys, it’s me, I-I’m here, it’s Kuiper!” he said, “I’m alive!” There were many relieved sounds and phrases exchanged, real relief, real joy that he was alive, which was something that he never really thought he’d get to hear. He couldn’t stop smiling. An official voice managed to break through the voices of his friends and family.
“Mr. Sarus. Do you and the person with you have access to spacesuits?” He looked at Sylvie who nodded.
“I have mine in here,” she said.
“Yes,” Kuiper said back.
“Use your remaining oxygen to fill them, put them on, and step outside. A rescue team will be sent to bring you up immediately.” Kuiper nodded. An official voice said something in Nytodian, too, and Shiris pressed a few buttons and responded. Then she jumped to her feet and Kuiper followed her, ready to look for his suit, but found he was already wearing it.
“Where’s my helmet?” he asked her. She pointed to the corner as she opened a panel and withdrew her own suit, which was better for her height and colored a deep blue, and rapidly she started putting it on. Kuiper waited to put on his helmet.
“Did you know so many people would come?!” Kuiper asked, awed.
“I had no idea!” responded Shiris, pulling on her suit with a grin. She laughed, “I didn’t know I had so many friends!” Kuiper laughed along with her.
“I know, like who are you guys here for, huh?” She laughed harder at that, a full sound, and it occurred to him he hadn’t heard her really laugh before. She had to stop from taking off her suit because she was doubled over laughing, and out of sheer joy, Kuiper found he was, too. His sides hurt, and his face turned red. He hadn’t felt that feeling in so long, and there was nothing in the universe like it.
“Oh, we’re going home,” she whispered, unable to stop smiling. She finished putting on her suit. “Come here, let’s finish the rest of this,” She ran over to where to oxygen packs were stuck into the wall, one being blue and one being white, and they were both open to the entire compartment. She pulled off the white one and told Kuiper to turn around, and began to put it on his back.
“So, when am I going to see you again?” asked Kuiper, feeling suddenly daring. Shiris laughed.
“You still want to after this?” she asked.
“Well, not if you don’t,” he responded.
“I do, I do!” she said, “I just figured…” she shook her head, “I don’t know what I figured. I just sort of thought after everything, and Nytodi being so far away, and-”
“Shiris,” Kuiper turned around and stopped her, “Turn around.” She smiled and did so, and he unhooked the blue one and pushed her thick hair aside, beginning to hook it up to her suit.
“My last name is Sarus,” he told her, “Kuiper Sarus, Solar System, Earth, North American continent. Maybe on your next vacation, you’ll run into me.”
“Eh, maybe,” she said. Kuiper patted her shoulder to indicate I had finished hooking her up, and she turned rapidly around, “How about instead, once you get to Earth, you call me and we can plan this vacation together.” Kuiper grinned at her. “Shiris Kirakall Mirsuti Trovin,” she reminded him, “Southern continent.” Kuiper allowed the rapidity of the moment to fade, and the stillness to hang in the air. He looked at her hair, her four eyes, her face, and he found that her visage had gone from horribly intrusive, frightening to look at, to absolutely welcome and even comforting. He never thought he’d be so glad to have a spaceship land on his asteroid, and he certainly never thought he’d miss who was inside. Calmly, he held out his hand.
“Until then,” he told her. She ignored his hand and leapt onto him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
“So long, Kuiper,” she whispered. Kuiper could feel his chest get warm, and slowly, tightly, he hugged her back. In that moment, it was the best feeling he could ever remember having. And it didn’t feel like it was Sylvie, or it should have been Sylvie, or it might have been Sylvie. It was Shiris. For once, that was enough.
Then he let her go and he grabbed his helmet, putting it on and running outside, feeling a brief rush of cold before his suit adjusted.
Sylvie always said that she’d wanted to live amongst the stars. To fly from one to another, faster than light, to know all the secrets that the galaxy had to offer. Looking up, Kuiper could feel in his heart that was where she was now. Behind the infinity of artificial and natural lights combined she was waiting, looking onto her love in the very same way he would watch the videos of her that he had taken, but unlike him, she was smiling, smiling down upon him like a thousand suns. And it was okay that she was dead, because dead didn’t really mean ruined. For the first time, he understood what she meant when she said “the time I spent with you has been and will always be the best time of my life.” It would always be with her, just like it would always be with him. She was dead, but in his heart and in his mind, the things they had would never really be gone.
And the people he thought had abandoned him were streaked across the sky now, waiting for him to come back up, waiting to laugh with him and talk with him and sing with him just like they always had before. The night sky was filled with the sweet and subtle taste of relief, with every person behind their headlights watching him, some crying, some laughing, all of them feeling, and in that sky, just for a moment, every single point of light, whether it was from the ships or the stars, was welcoming him back with eager and open arms into the place he loved so much and left behind for so long. Every inch of the galaxy was whispering to him in the old familiar voice of his long-deceased love, “Come home, now, come home,” echoing and booming for light years upon glorious light years in every possible direction and region of the known and unknown universe...
And Kuiper stood below.