Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it

[2/2]

Morgan sat a mug of steaming coffee on the counter before me, and milk swirled across its frothy surface in billowing spirals as the two mixed. I contemplated the man’s story for a moment as I watched the tiny galaxy in my cup twirl in the darkness.

“It was asteroids for us, I think,” I said, remembering the weeks before leaving the planet for the last time, recalling the situation which had compelled with such urgency humanity to send its emissaries into the stars. A close encounter with a rogue planet… clouds of rocky bodies flung into the inner solar system… the fate of the world had become uncertain, so a fleet of ships had been dispatched to carry a colony of Earthlings to a suitable exoplanet. Those final days had been filled with fear, yes, but also with unity, perhaps for the first time in our history. Not war, nor peace, not political will, nor business sense, no alliance nor rivalry, but only the most basic, most human drive for survival had brought about this final act to save our species, to send vessels into the great dark, seeds cast afield in the hopes of taking root once more. I could never know the fate of the mission beyond that of my own ship, though it’s possible my arrival in this place told me all I needed to know.

I took a sip of the coffee, letting its warmth fill me, the earthy aroma taking me back to the forests, the grasslands, the seashores… in its depths I saw flowing rivers and crashing oceans, billowing clouds and glistening auroras… I stood from my seat and crossed the cafe, poring over the bookcases until I spotted what I had gone in search of. I withdrew a small volume, bound in delicate blue cloth. Returning to the bar, I took a deep breath and opened the tome, revealing images of my homeworld. However ordinary the scenes in the book may have seemed in my former life, each one felt like a precious treasure to me in this place.

“Earth is- Earth was beautiful. And fragile. Our people weren’t easy on it. But it gave us all that we could ever have wanted or needed. Upon it we built many beautiful and powerful things, but none so beautiful nor powerful as the world itself… We were a small planet in a distant corner of the universe. I don’t know if any of it can compare to the rest of what is, or was, out there… but being there, it felt like everything.”

The others smiled back at me.

“I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

(I loved this prompt but found myself drawn to the perspective of a visitor rather than the owner- I hope that’s okay!)

[1/2]

It’s funny how reminiscent the alarm on the cryosleep system was to my old alarm clock back home. Maybe there’s just something about waking up in an utterly alien space that encourages the mind to cling to any shred of familiarity. Given my circumstances, though, I wasn’t in a position to complain about a rude awakening. Considering the number of digits in the date readout on the main console I’d had more than a solid night’s sleep.

Based on the other cryptic messages displayed there I was able to piece together that some time ago the ship’s navigation system had encountered a fault. With a functional fusion core and warp drive, though, the vessel had stayed its course until just now, when the power supply had finally dwindled to nearly nothing. The remainder of the ship’s meager energy had been used to initiate the reanimation sequence… and, apparently, to perform an autonomous landing. On what, though? More perplexing still, the outboard sensors were reporting a breathable atmosphere. Out here, after flying for all this time… the odds of running across anything solid, much less habitable, must have been several trillion to one. And yet, the ship certainly seemed to be stationary. What could I do but head for the airlock?

I pulled the gas exchange lever and after a moment the hatch slid aside with a hiss. I stepped out into… a parking lot? Well, not exactly… there weren’t any lines marked upon the sandy soil or anything like that, but in this open field my ship had taken its place alongside several others, neatly lined up in front of a small, surprisingly inviting building. I took another wobbly step forward, trying to find my footing under the paltry gravity of the planetoid, and found myself wondering if it was possible to dream during cryosleep…

I hardly realized I had walked over to the building until I stepped up onto its porch and, leaning on a simple wrought iron table, turned around to look across the landscape. Never, not across all my previous spaceflights, nor all my nights spent stargazing, had I seen even a shadow of the spectacle now before me. This little world seemed to be adrift off the plane of two spiral galaxies whose spindly arms locked them into a dance unfolding across cosmic time. Those sprawling forms filled the sky before me and yet I knew them still to be unimaginably distant. I must have been looking upon countless worlds, more than I could ever conceive of, all of them forever beyond my reach. I could have stood on that spot transfixed forever had the silence not been broken by a bright jingle behind me.

“Why don’t you come inside, dear? You must have had a long journey.”

The woman smoothed her apron and fixed a strand of her graying hair behind her ear as she expectantly held the door open for me. Looking inside I could see several more tables scattered a bit haphazardly beneath the warm lights that cast the inviting glow into the lot outside. I nodded and entered, stopping to look around at the other patrons, a dozen perhaps, in all, a few of whom smiled warmly at me. Surely no faraway alien civilization would have built a cafe into such a distinctly human style… I mean, where did the wood flooring even come from? The only thing green and leafy anywhere in sight were a few tangled vines spilling from the planters that sat atop the bookcases lining the back wall.

“Something to drink?”

Still feeling rather like I was standing in the middle of a dream, I looked blankly toward the bar where the owner now stood. With a little chuckle, she pointed above her head, and my gaze followed her direction to a menu, scrawled in chalk beneath a heading: THE LAST DREGS - STEEPED IN THE STARS.

“I… I’ll have coffee with milk, please?”

Sinking onto a barstool, I began to try, at last, to pull together some recollection of what had happened before I entered cryosleep.

“It’ll come to you. Just give it time.” I raised my eyes again and found the woman standing at the other side of the counter, a glass jar of coffee grounds in one hand, the other outstretched toward me. “Morgan,” she said.

“Oh, um… Casey,” I offered in return, extending my hand which she embraced warmly before returning to work.

“Give it time,” she repeated. “We’ve all been there. All lost much… yet, all found this place.”

I sat in dumbstruck silence for a moment, focusing only on the quiet clinking of Morgan’s utensils and the dull murmur of conversation in other corners of the cafe. A man seated at a table by the window, one of those who had met my gaze when I first entered, stood and walked to one of the bookshelves where he withdrew a volume before coming to join me at the bar. A bracelet of crystal around his wrist jingled as he placed the book on the counter.

“I’m sure everything’s a bit hazy,” he began. “Just start with what you know. What was your homeworld like?”

How does one describe their own planet? How do you put into a few words something that was literally your entire world?

“Well, Earth is… small, I think? Rocky, mostly covered in liquid water… one large moon, orbits an average yellow dwarf…”

“Sure, sure… I mean to say, though, what was it like? How did it feel to be there?”

“Oh.” I paused to consider the question, still at a bit of a loss. In my mind I could see the whole globe through the porthole of my ship… the last thing I had seen before entering cryosleep. My whole range of experiences had happened on that one distant speck… how do you summarize that without some other point of reference?

He smiled sympathetically at me and began to page through the book, stopping when he came to an image.

“My world was called Alediel. Each morning when our suns rose, our nebula would light up and scatter all the starlight. The first warm rays would fall across your face and the universe would come to life all around you, as though it wanted to show you every color it could muster all at once.” He turned the page. “Our people built great structures of glass and crystal, and each evening they would catch the glow of the setting suns. Each day seemed to stretch out forever until the final shard of refracted light disappeared, leaving only the dim glow of hazy stardust hanging in the sky.”

“It’s beautiful!” I gasped as he showed me the book.

“It was beautiful. One of our suns was preparing to go supernova, and we had the means to send but few off of our world. This book and I may be all that remain of what we built,” he said. I looked up aghast, but rather than appearing somber his expression was serene, and the crystals dangling from his wrist threw the lights above us back across his face as dancing spectra. “To lose one’s world is undoubtedly sorrowful,” he explained, “but there is little which lasts forever. To know that the memory of it all lives on in this place brings me a measure of peace.”

Ooh, that sounds fascinating, definitely added to my reading list! Thank you :)

Thanks so much! Really appreciate the prompt!

Thank you!

Aw, thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed

“… some hibiscus, and a few shavings of ginger root… there!” I brought the teapot to my nose, wafting together the aromas of the ingredients as a conductor orchestrating a symphony. With a twist of the knob on the hot water tap I began to fill the vessel with tea-to-be, the dried leaves and petals blooming once more as the water breathed life and color into the herbs.

I carried the full pot to my kitchen table and took a seat to wait and watch this almost sacred part of my morning ritual. The essences of each component mingled in dull clouds that swirled through the liquid. As the surface settled I caught my own reflection in the tea, a darkened image of my own eye looking back at me from within. I let my gaze drift back to the cabinet where I had spent years haphazardly hoarding bottles of this and that like a greedy sorcerer with a penchant for potions. A little vial containing twists of lemon peel caught my attention, perhaps the perfect sharp note to sing out at the top of my brew.

When I dropped the rind into the pot, shattering the placid surface for a moment, it was almost as though the whole character of the tea shifted, the clouds within swirling in turbulent spirals. I’d never been quite so attentive to the way a single ingredient could alter a brew, and I eagerly awaited a chance to sample the results as the tea settled once more. I caught my own eye on the surface once more, making eye contact until… it blinked.

I would probably have convinced myself it was a trick of the light if it didn’t disappear from the pot altogether shortly after. In its place, something bobbed up from impossibly deep within- a bottle? A glass bottle, but its base was far too wide to fit through the lid of my pot.

Hurriedly I pulled a large plate from the cupboard and poured enough tea onto it to form a shallow pool. When it settled again a pair of eyes this time appeared once more, followed by a bottle, which bobbed to the surface and rolled to its side on my plate, revealing a scroll of paper within.

I took the bottle and uncorked it, retrieving the message. “Please help, accident at tea plantation. Fell into a flooded crop. Trapped here for two weeks, unable to escape through teacups, teapots, travel mugs.”

I dropped the note to the table and ran to the cabinet, scooping as many ingredients into my arms as I could before ferrying them to the bathroom. I began to draw a bath and surveyed the basin before me as I contemplated my stock of ingredients. “I’m going to need more tea when this is all finished.”