Space Sirens

Chapter 2

Today they took their first space walk.

Jean pushed off from the metal frame of the craft without pause. He twisted weightlessly in space until the safety lines snapped tight and pulled him back. He watched as the sun eclipsed behind a distant moon, saw a single star suddenly fade, and watched as a comet with a long tail of white dust spread apart an asteroid belt. They were gods out here, watching life form and perish before their eyes.

Far below them was their green and blue planet, but a speck of white agiasnt the blackness of space. The children were happy without their families, they were lucky. Their fathers worked on these space crafts. They were taken on long expeditions with them, witnessing some of the strangest creatures they have ever seen, and photographed unnatural sights.

They had seen waterfalls fall up, swam in space between floating mountains, breathed without tanks in black water where fish glowed with irredecence. They had got lost in a field of glass, which they proceeded to shatter to pieces with each step. They played chess with monkeys with bifocals, which actually wasn't too different from their home planet. But these monkeys were made of stone, and spoke by rubbing their hands together.

 Kayoko missed home. She didn't show it, of course. She didn't want to seem like a child. She didn't want Jean to be dissapointed in her. So she went along although she was afraid out of her mind of the black mouth before her. It was going to swallow her up and never spit her back out. But she let go of the bar anyway. She drifted over to Jean, slower than she would have liked, and clung to his shirt. He didn't seem to notice as he watched a comet pass.

Space became a nervous system of colors where veins of light trailed through the black. A star had just died near. Well....near enough to be the size of a pen point. The power of the explosion still ruffled their hair and sent them back flying towards the ship. Jean cartwheeled through the air as if it were only second nature to him. Kayoko was flung, with arms and legs spralled, into space and over the ship. She grappled for a hold on the safety line, her heart hammering and her stomach up in her throat. The belts pinched her waist and put an unbearable weight on her hips, but it was better than drifting through space like there fathers always do. Every time she saw her father drift past the plexiglass windows she instincly froze. It was a good thing that they were close to the asteroid belt so the men could rebound off the meteors and back to the ship.