thou wast not born for death

immortal bird

George stares at the window above him.

The moon is awfully bright tonight, round and full and so close it feels like George could reach out and touch it. He almost does, lifting his arm and stretching his fingertips to splay out on the glass. He imagines holding it in his hand, so cold it'll burn, turning his blood to little more than ice crystals lodged within his veins.

He hears the doors hiss shut. Dream and Sapnap, returned from a hunting trip. Their noise is infectious, burrowing under his bedroom door and simply refusing to leave. He hopes they'll have returned with something more than rabbit hide and grains of goddamned space dust in their pockets this time.

There's a heavy clatter as one of them drops a knife or a gun, and then the sort of giggles that only Dream makes when Sapnap's done something stupid.

George listens to Dream hiss under his breath, "Shh! You'll wake George up!"

Sapnap laughs too, much louder than Dream. "He's been asleep for like, three days now. He needs to wake up soon."

"Maybe," Dream starts to say, before cutting off into hiccuping wheezes. "Maybe he's gone into hibernation."

George sighs and rolls out of his bunk. The other two will need someone to prepare the food anyway, and Sapnap is right. He should get up soon.

He presses his index finger to the scanner to activate the doors, stepping out into the main room when they slide open. Dream and Sapnap look up at his entrance, and George watches as Sapnap immediately tries to stifle another laugh.

George picks at the ratty sweatpants he's been wearing for three days. Dream bites his lip like he's unsure what quite to say. "Did you two manage to find anything worthwhile this time?" he asks before either of them can say anything.

Sapnap lifts up his pack, placing it on the table and unlocking it. "Sure. We found a whole deer carcass. I haven't seen deer in years, George."

"A whole one?"

"Well," Dream says, making a face. "It was missing the legs and the head, but most of the abdomen was salvageable. It should last us a week, at least. But we'll be docking at a market before then, so we can stock up anyway."

"Which market?" Sapnap asks, leaving his pack. George moves forward to unpack it, lifting out several wrapped cuts of meat. "I didn't know there was a market planet on our flight path."

"MD-38," Dream says. He starts to unpack his own bag, adding the contents to the pile George is creating. "It's lesser-known. Kinda sketchy."

"Sapnap should fit right in then," George says.

Sapnap gasps. "George!"

Dream chuckles. He finishes emptying his pack and begins to transfer some of the meat cuts to their stasis-chamber. "It should have everything we need, though. Supplies, food, tools. We can finally repair the lazers."

"You think they'll have the parts?" Sapnap asks.

"Sure," Dream says, "if anywhere did, it'd be MD-38. This ship was built there, after all."

George frowns, pausing as he places the last cut of meat into stasis. "Really?"

Dream glances at him. "Yeah. Did I never tell you?"

Sapnap purses his lips. "No. You didn't."

"Mm. Sorry," Dream shrugs. "We'll be docking there in the next few sol-sets. We can probably afford to stay for a bit. They have cheap docking. We'll do our repairs there."

"How cheap?" George asks. He closes the door to the stasis-chamber, and then pulls up their joint credit balance on his comm-strap. The total makes him grimace.