As always, feedback is appreciated.
-Cryspr
Laxana looked down on the little blue planet, hardly believing they were finally here. He watched as the clouds in the atmosphere twisted and danced above the surface, forming vague patterns as they moved. And near the horizon, he could make out a long line of green, where a continent was rotating into view. A beautiful planet, he thought. It almost makes the trip here worth it.
He stood on the balcony of the starship, which jutted out like a large, glass bubble from the rest of the hull. It was primarily a viewing area, granting a wonderful view of what lay ahead. The glass curved around into a half sphere, surrounding the thin platform Laxana stood on. He could look down and see ocean below him. Normally, all he could see were stars in every direction, a view which had gotten old after the first month in space. This was the first time Laxana had come out here in three years.
And what a space of years it's been, he mused. It hadn't really been three years, at least not for the rest of the universe. Time tended to bend a little when travelling close to light speed. Technically, they had been in space for a few millennia. They hadn't even been certain this planet would still be green and ripe when they arrived, as any number of things could have gone wrong during that time. But they had no other choice. The planet was their salvation, their last chance of survival. And even if they could find another planet in range, odds were that the ship wouldn't last another journey.
But the planet was still green and ripe. Blue was all he could see now, expansive ocean like none of his people had seen in generations. The continent was coming into view as the starship orbited the planet, rotating counter to the planet's own spin. Laxana watched breathlessly as it marched onward, bracing himself for desolate grey and ashy brown, for signs that they had failed. But it was green all the way across.
"We made it," came a voice from behind him. Laxana didn't turn as Ubryn moved to stand beside him, her steps heavy as the gravity fields pulled her feet to the deck. The fields made it easier to get around, but sometimes Laxana missed the feeling of zero gravity.
He nodded in acknowledgment. "Yes," he told Ubryn, "we made it." Her skin was a deep blue, her eyes large and milky white. Her head was large and bulbous, in contrast to her frail body. Like him, she wore the black robes of the Council of Eight, made from a scaly leather.
"To be honest, I was kind of worried about what we might find here," she confided to him. "So many worries have gone through my mind since we started out here."
"Well, don't start celebrating quite yet," Laxana reminded her, "we still need to wait for the probe's readings to come back. For all we know, the climate could be too extreme for us, or maybe the atmosphere-"
"Thank you," she interjected sarcastically, "for putting all of my worries to rest."
He winced. "Sorry. I'm just so used to things going wrong."
Ubryn nodded in understanding. "I get it. That was a rough first year. First the engines, then the life support, and then that whole.... mutiny thing... it's honestly amazing that we got this far."
"This ship shouldn't have been sent out so early," Laxana noted, shaking his head. "Too many glitches, not enough stores in the hold."
"Plus," Ubryn added, "there's the problem of throwing ninety thousand people into a metal vessel without proper training, or even compatibility testing! Everything that we wanted to leave behind, we just ended up bringing with us."
"We won't be able to go anywhere else," Laxana told her. "We won't last long out there, especially now that we're down to less than half of our original number. Settle here or die, those are our choices."
