Spark

Sinking and Healing

You're left alone for a bit when Namjoon goes to retrieve his medical bag.

His footsteps echo on the mosaic tiles as he exits, and he allows the heavy wooden door to drift closed in his wake.

The soft shudder of the door stopping in its frame echoes, too.

Instantly, you miss him.

Not because your trust Namjoon or associate him with safety, but he was someone in the room with you. His absence makes you take a second look around the room. After the short presence of Namjoon and his radiant comfort, this room that was exciting and new beforehand now presses in on you with strange coldness.

It's empty, and large and hollow and alone.

Those feelings are starting to burrow into you.

You think suddenly that you haven't ever been quite this alone before.

Although the flight from Earth to Servus chained up in Thing's spaceship should have felt worse than this, there's something inexplicably terrible about sitting safe in this room, staring out the window at an yellow sky and alien land.

As you're observing, a soft coo sounds from outside the balcony. A bird floats by on the breeze, and glides down to casually perch on the gold-rimmed marble balcony. It's smallish, the size of a cardinal, and colored a pale cream with a plume of shimmering black. It's like someone has plucked a strand of the Cosmos from space and braided it into the bird's feathers. You look closer, because something about the shape of the bird's face is striking you as off.

When you realize the thing is odd looking due to the second, smaller beak resting beneath its eyes, you clamp your mouth shut and look away.

The bird coos again, flying away from the balcony.

It's so strange.

The bird.

The people.

This place.

Feeling introspective, you clasp the bed draping loosely in a fist. It tries to escape you, effervescent silk against your palm.

You are possibly the only human on this entire planet.

What is your family doing right now?

Do they even know you're missing? Wracking your brain, you try to recall the minimal information you know about space travel.

You've watched the movie Interstellar, the one where Matthew Mcconaughey slips through a wormhole in space and eventually makes his way back to his family, only to find his daughter is now an old woman while he hasn't aged. That's all you can currently think about - the possibility that if you ever do make it back to Earth, your family will be long dead and gone.

The not knowing is an odd feeling.

They could be dead already. Namjoon did mention that the planet you're on is very, very far from your own.