Sky – pt. 1

This is just a snippet of a story I began writing several months ago based on a series of oddly cinematic, continuous dreams. I haven’t written very much more, and it’s plausible to argue that I never will. This story is my own work, so please don’t go off stealing it or anything. It’s hardly worth plagiarizing.

___________________________

      Stars. It’s not like they’re anything new. They’ve always been there, just the same. Distant, shining… even when the sun comes and hides them, they’re still there, still watching. So why is it that humans have always been so fascinated by them? Always thought of them as something so mystical and amazing? So from square one they started making machines to get closer to them, to look into their secrets, and they traveled out to space to see them up closer. But from where I was floating, the stars didn’t look any closer, and they certainly didn’t seem like guardian angels watching over me of any sort. The truth about stars is that they’re made of fire and gas. They aren’t meant to guide your way, or grant your wishes. They’re made to burn. Still, from where I was floating, they seemed cold, and mocking. Like spectators to a murder they won’t do anything to prevent. Still, if I could’ve wished on one of those titans of gas and fire, I’d have wished for air.
       While I was floating there, watching my breath make little fog clouds on the glass in front of me and wondering how many more breaths I had before I was dead, I stared back at those mocking stars not with defiance, but pleading. “God, please let them send me someone. I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not ever.” It was a selfish thought, but it was mine, and one of the only real thoughts I had left. It’s funny how quickly suffocation limits your brain. Not funny like a good joke or watching someone else fall down the stairs, but funny in the way that makes you want to vomit or cry, but somehow you can’t find it in you to do either. I think I did laugh at myself a little, then, if only because I couldn’t breathe enough for tears. The chances of anyone finding me in this floating body field were so small they could hardly even be considered, but I clung to them. “Maybe someone saw the explosion,” I thought, but I knew it wasn’t likely. Fire doesn’t go far in space. Just like me, fire needs air. Maybe I was made to burn.
     In a way, I guess I’m glad what little breath I had kept me from seeing much but the pinpoints of light so far away. I knew all around me that other bodies had already run out of air and that now space was stealing their heat, discoloring them, and bloating them into forms that would barely be recognizable. I didn’t want to turn blue and twist like that. Already my lungs felt stretched, my throat was tight and burning. There, in that graveyard of twisted metal and floating bodies, I gave into death. And just as I was breathing my last, counting my last regrets, and whimpering out my last pathetic tears, a star came closer. To be more exact, it burst to light before my nearly sightless eyes, and the darkness surrounding that star blotted out all the others and drew me into itself.
        When the light came back, there was an angel holding me. At least, at the time he was an angel. Future knowledge would prove him more to be a fox or perhaps a horse’s ass, but for then, he looked perfectly like every picture of an angel I’d ever seen. His hair was as pale as moonlight on new snow, though he couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than I was. His features had the same sharp, icy quality, even through the fog of my dying mind. He was breathing for me, his lips pressed against mine, forcing air into my exhausted lungs with all the insistent gentility of a lover. As we breathed together and I breathed him in, I slipped away again. In some strange way, this angel smelled like a planet – a real planet – one with dirt and trees and musky, untamed places. In that moment, I thought I was dead and Heaven was an untainted world.
      ”Breathe,” the angel murmured, calling me back to myself as my lungs filled themselves with cool air. “You’re safe now.” Behind him someone snorted in suppressed amusement. He turned his face and stared coldly at the indistinct person until they were silent. Turning back to me, he lifted me from the floor as if I weighed nothing, even in that clumsy suit. I sank against his chest, drawing in his heat and gazing up at his dark eyes. I remember pleading inwardly that he would look at me again, just to assure me I was alive. As he laid me on a cot, my hand found his and I clung to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to speaking. He pulled free slowly and turned away. Within seconds, I was asleep in the metal bowels of the ship that had answered my prayers.
         

______________________________

And now we all know why Xae doesn’t write sci-fi.