The Path Between the Stars

Prologue

Year ~ 2019

Ut per ardua astra ~ Through difficult stars to love ~

The small space that I'm hidden in is surrounded by dusty wastelands, yet, despite the bareness of the horizon and the soot and filth that covers everything as far as the eye can see, the ruins that surround me are somehow still breath-taking in their awfulness.

There is still life here. Still breath and air and beauty...

You just had to look for it.

And as the violently-alive astral sun, which hangs heavy and full in the always too-bright sky, burns down on the cracked earth, I do see the beauty here. I have to see it. I force myself to recognize the luckiness of life.

Because in this wasteland that was once my home, I have to hold on to hope. Hope that there will be something after all of this. And hope that whatever is left after this is worth living for. But mostly, hope that I will find him.

Yes, I have to have hope, because some days, trying to keep silent against the noise and chaos of the world outside, I want to die. Press the razor blade, the one I keep for poor protection, against my wrists and be done with it. Be done with everything in this death-riddled world.

Yet he holds me here; he tethers me to a life that is unthinkable. He has such power over me.

So I keep going with the singular motivating truth that someday he will also be here. I only have to wait a little while longer. Bide my time, survive the coming years. And then, we'll be together; he'll come for me. He'll find me hiding in the shadows of this scorched planet. And then the journal clutched against my chest will be more than just thick lead markings from a dull pencil. More than just words on paper. They will be my proof that this really happened. That I was here, and so was he.

I lower the battered treasure from my body and stare down at the dirty cover of the journal. I've read the entries over and over again. I have memorized the sentences so that the words are constantly alive within my head, giving me courage to continue. But I have to read them again today. I have to see them once more with my own eyes, as the earth shakes and quakes and the terror that lives inside of me threatens to shred my fragile nerves.

Today, as my morbidity grips me too tightly and I am vividly remembering all of the people that I have lost, the words are what will keep me breathing.

I shake my head in both pity and annoyance. The word 'lost' is not the right word to describe what has happened to them. Within the word lost still lingers a small ray of possibility that something or someone can be found again.

Dead.

They are dead.

Not lost.

I open the journal, my fingers tracing over the words on the first couple of pages. Pages that are filled with my own self-pitying ramblings of a life that I felt was so unfair at the time. Stupid me. Little did I know what was about to happen. I would have been more grateful for the good things had I known.

I turn the slowly aging pages until I reach his first message, and I smile. The warmth from the expression travels all the way inside of me, heat building in my empty stomach at the thought of him, at the memory of that first note. This was the beginning of everything, the start of a kind of love that I'd never known before. Yet, in a very real sense, I still don't know it. It isn't something physical or tangible. I can't remember the feel of it along my skin or the taste of it in my mouth. It just is.

And then my smile fades away. I worry that our love will never go beyond words. Until we are together, until he can hold me—for the very first time—in his arms and take away the nightmares, none of this will feel truly real.

My eyes threaten tears as I stare at my hope written in mottled ink against yellowing paper. I fight them back, but I know my resistance will be futile in the end. These words, his words, will continue to be my anchor. I cannot let them go. If I do, my body will sink into nothingness.

No. I will not descend into the death and madness of the world. I will keep the conversations we have shared inside my heart no matter what. This journal will sustain me throughout the rest of time, even if we never find one another. They will be my everything, even if his hands never press against the warmth of me. The sentences, so full of meaning and devotion, will hold me in their embrace until this life is over. And when I am gone from this planet, I will lie beside him in the earth.

Even if his body is buried in another time and in another place, my spirit will find his.

I read the first sentence he wrote to me...Who are you? The tears will come now; my willpower against them is a wilted, dying thing. They build in my eyes as I read further, until they are salty streams running down my cheeks.

I cry and cry as I find him within the words on the page. I devour every sentence. The journal is my sustenance. My food when I am starving. I want to spend all day here, huddled on the floor, reading and falling in love all over again, but my sanctuary is shattered by a crash outside. I should leave this place; that's what he wants me to do. He's told me it's not safe here anymore. Not that anywhere else is particular safe, but this place is especially bad. The sane part of me wants to listen to him. My heart is not rational.

Because I can't leave here. I can't. If I do, it's like I am leaving him behind. And I'm not ready to do that. Another loud sound vibrates my body. I let fresh, terror-filled tears flow down my dirty cheeks.

There are so many things in this world to be scared of now. But my greatest fear above all fears—the one that outweighs everything else that consumes me—is the dreadful thought that I may lose him forever. That constant possibility is more debilitating than facing the sun storms, the acid rain, or even the remaining humans that haunt the devastation.

Time may separate us, but our love binds us together. Here, in this home, through this journal that breaches the great chasm between us, we are one. If I leave here, I know the spell will be broken. The tether that connects us will be severed.

In this world that is shattered beyond repair, I cannot bring myself to take the chance that we will never find each other again.