‘Come with me,’ Ayla pleaded. Her soft brown eyes glimmered with tears, yet they wielded daggers sharp enough to cut through the clamour. It was her final hope—a dying star’s last spectacle of light before it was winked out of existence forever.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered and my voice almost broke, ‘but I can’t—you know why.’
Ayla gripped me hard and buried the side of her head in my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, cupping my chin on the fiery tangle of her hair. But my eyes remained frozen, clinging to the dam wall that held back the deluge.
A white dropship hovered overhead, rearing its twin thrusters in a jet of blue propulsion. A screen of dust flicked in our hair as it settled on the ground. It was just one of many now flocking the dusk-lit sky like birds of prey.
A long moment passed before Ayla raised her face, and her eyes locked me with a mournful wish. She was desperate for the spark she could still cling to, but I could not meet that haunting gaze, and I turned away. There was so much I wanted to say to her, but the weight of the moment impressed with me a poisoned chalice—one I couldn’t bear to pass on to her.
‘I love you so much, but this is where we depart,’ my mind couldn’t register the words I had spoken.
There was a sharp gasp as Ayla’s hands loosened from my arms. I saw the light in her eyes darken, ballooning into giant black holes. She ambled back a few steps, and yet the distance between us gravitated stars.
There was a part of me that wanted to leave with her, but I couldn’t detach myself from our world, from all I knew. She had none of those binds, but she had me. I wanted to convince her to stay, but the tears stroking her soft white cheeks reflected the betrayal squeezing the air from my lungs. I wondered how she could go with them. How could she abandon the fight? But I knew she was done with war. Peace was everything she sought. I once believed in it. Not anymore.
Beyond the jagged mountain peaks, the sun was setting in a fiery haze. Stars kindled the sky, tinged orange like the desert landscape that swallowed Ayla’s heels as she strode away. Orange—like the tangle of Ayla’s hair catching a faint breeze. I saw the pale outline of her face, her black cloak flicking behind her, and I heard the death knell of engines screaming in the valley below.
It was the promise of her tomorrow, but it was their lies stealing my dreams away.
* * *
It was one wary bootstep after another. I trudged up the rocky terrace to a place I thought never to return. I saw the landscape billow before me, capped with towering mountain peaks like a giant’s misshapen smile. The night sky tempered the endless space with a cold black ocean glittering with distant starlight. And I saw the three sisters shining brightly overhead.
They were three stars, each a bright orb illuminating the unknown reach beyond. Together they forged the constellation known as Orion’s Belt. I thought that was where they were from as my eyes glared into the night, and then I inevitably thought about her.
I saw Ayla’s hair emitted by distant Mars, a hopeful sprite in endless oblivion. I imagined her waiting on board a lone vessel, searching for her new home. I wondered if she still thought about that day, as I did. I recalled every heartbeat and every strained tear that stoked the colour in her pale cheeks. I remembered the words that left my mouth, and the regret that followed—an aeon ago, a lifetime embroiled in war.
How long had passed? Six months, twelve? Time was no longer a physical phenomenon I observed. The days all merged to become one thing, becoming nothing. The life that still festered on Earth, to which I clung to from the shadows like a ghost haunted by a fading past, became my daily routine. It was in the scraps of food I consumed, the heavy nightly drink, my single purpose, what we had before—only she was no longer there.
I kept my life to what I knew, driving stubbornly through their lies to continue an unending war. But thoughts of her brown eyes, wet with tears, her fiery-red hair, peppered my mind with poisoned blades. I thought I was done with love. I had promised myself I would never again fall for that brazen curse. But I had believed the lie, only to realise it too late.
They, as I often spat—the Neitha—ruled the stars with their dread-ships of war. My brow tightened with anger. I spat again. And then again for good measure. My eyes hovered over the glowing screen of the device held tautly in my hand, and I grimaced as I read the headline:
Earth Surrenders
Have your say: vote now!
My stomach knotted. It all happened so quickly, no one knew what to do. Could this really have happened? Even now, the words twisted my thoughts with my growing anger.
The Neitha were a galaxy-spanning empire with idealistic intentions—like the rest of them, I thought. But they had merely brought war. That was their truth, the rotting core of fruit nestled at the base of the tree they had planted and called life. That infamous fruit, the fateful bite that unravelled their lies.
All they had created was humanity’s destruction.
I could never forgive them, not after what they had done. Not after everything we had achieved so far to fight them. We had fought an insurgency they could not break. The Neitha employed human bounty hunters and mercenaries, but we fought them too. We had fought them from every shadow, every nook, every forest, from the shattered cities of our world. But then, they offered the unthinkable. They granted humanity asylum.
They allowed anyone willing the chance to begin life anew, somewhere off-world, a whole new beginning. Earth would be left behind. The light of our home would no longer kindle our dreams. But our world was dying, even as we strove each day to save some small part of it.
Ayla was one of the first to leave. This war had grown beyond her, and in her absence, I had lost my peace. She was my only token to the past, but now she was gone. I stared at the handheld device for a long moment, and I wrestled with the love I had sworn to forget, despite my trembling hands.
Reluctantly, I searched her online profile.
The static buzz, a dead white noise, left a heavy weight inside. It was real. She was gone. The device slipped from my hand, clattering to the ground.
A Daughter of the Wind?
Ayla always liked poetry. She clung to it stubbornly, as if it were humanity’s last true voice. I smiled despite myself. I always liked that about her. Was this just another one of her cryptic, poetic expressions? Damn it, I didn’t have the mind for such things. That was Ayla’s domain, her gift.
I reached down to collect the handheld device. Perhaps there was someone out there who could help me make sense of it?
Thalassa, Amphitrite, the Nereids, and the Anemone. I let these unusual names linger in my mind. The names mattered because each ship was destined to follow a separate route. They were old human space cruisers repurposed for transport and augmented with Neithan technology. They were mobile cities destined for the stars, each bearing the hopes of a hundred thousand survivors. How had humanity come to this?
The three sisters hovered brightly overhead. I imagined the distance across dead space and the time to reach them. And I thought of Ayla, the way her hair billowed as if alive in orange sunlight, before she vanished into the stars.
It was time to find her.
