paint them, and now she’ll never see them again. She wraps her finger in them, twisting them, and lets them go after a moment of trying to memorize how they feel, how they curl.
Ajita isn’t able to watch the liftoff. She was only able to watch Yallie walk out the door in her new silver uniform, turn around and give her a salute, or an air kiss, Ajita can’t really remember. Her eyes were all watery and blurry. So she leans against the window, face pressed against the glass, and watches until Yallie boards the ship, until they roll out of the cavernous room and off to the launch pad.
When the room is empty, and mostly dark, and the observatory truly abandoned, she turns around and finds the stairway. She doesn’t stop going up, going past floor after floor, staircases and levels she had never noticed in her feverish run through the halls, never noticed during her dull, hazy days. And she knows when she reaches the top floor, because there’s a door, a door with a handle and not one that goes clink.
Before she steps outside, she stands very still, so still she can feel the air move, and closes her eyes. She can’t hear anything, but she can feel the vibrations. They begin as a small shiver, something she can feel only in her toes. But the shivers become stronger and she stands in an empty staircase imagining the ships roaring to life, aiming for worlds and space ports beyond her tiny, brown planet, which is a mere stop post in the passageways and places of the Universe.
And in her mind she can see it – a consuming darkness punctuated by bright sparkles of light, galaxies and stars spinning and shining and her brave Yallie looking out the window. She’ll be taking all those measurements and thinking of all those numbers and then she’ll look at a star and think of her.
She opens her eyes. The vibrations fade. The ships are spiraling away to the edges of the Universe. The grey walls of the School surround her, but all Ajita can see are stars.
She shoves the door open and the wind greets her and she climbed all those stairs but there is nothing but ground before her. Stumbling, she leaves the stoop, and hears the door close and lock behind her. She gasps, heaves, with the coldness of the wind; it scrapes and freezes her throat and the clouds above her churn, dark and smoky.
Falling to her knees, she presses her hands into the frozen dirt. It’s not soft like sand. She feels as if the wind has stripped her of her memories, as if it has left her naked and alone and stranded. It is hard to think of what sand feels like when it is so cold, when there is nothing but deadness and emptiness. Earth is very different from her memories, and she thinks of Yallie’s words about Earth, about how it was killed, slain, murdered by its inhabitants while they attempted to destroy each other, and in turn, themselves.
But over the whipping of the wind, she can hear it, that roar, and she knows the rockets are ascending. She scrambles to follow them, not turning once to look back at the School, hauling herself over rocks as she climbs and climbs and climbs. She flattens herself against the rock face, presses her cheek against it, and remembers the mud buildings and the figure of stone clay, built on mountain tops so high. She ignores the pain and bleeding in her hands, the tears in her uniform; she can’t hear the roar of the ships anymore, and she supposes the liftoff is over and done already, but she needs to escape and be free, she needs to see them…the stars.
And then she puts her hand against something that is not rock or dirt. It is cold, colder than the wind, and bright white. Snow. Her breath puffs in front of her face, visible. She continues on, slipping in it and marveling in it and as she surveys the mountainside, she thinks of Earth: it’s not dead, it’s recovering.
By the time her sensation has faded, by the time her fingers are unfeeling and red and black, the snow is noticeably thicker, the air noticeably thinner, and all is quiet. Not static. Not white noise. Just…quiet.
She collapses against the mountain and stares at the clouds that swirl around her, and they don’t seem so dark anymore, but white and thin. Like the snow.
Her insides are cold, and her shivers have long since stopped, and she wants to laugh because she feels hurt and free and never thought the two would go hand in hand. Imprisonment, though, she reflects, hurt as well, in different ways.
She waits and waits, and it’s as if the Earth hears her…or maybe it is recovering, because the thicker clouds pass by, and the thinner clouds get thinner and thinner, until among all the white…she can see black.
Her breath catches in her throat, and it’s almost painful to start breathing again, but there they are: silvery white stars shining against the blackness of space.
“Rasjaurom,” she whispers hoarsely, as loudly as her voice will allow.
The seven stars shine over her, reflect in her eyes, and she reaches out towards them. And among all those beautiful stars, in all that darkness, she thinks she sees a star fly by, a little silvery twinkle that is actually a silver and blue rocket.
Free and united with the Earth and Rasjaurom at last, Ajita lets her arm fall and listens to her breathing slow. Her vision seems to be darkening, but the stars still glimmer brightly, and she makes sure to keep her eyes open, until her very last breath.
After they had kissed, Ajita had held her breath, keeping Yallie’s life force inside of her, feeling it burn in her lungs. She hadn’t opened her mouth until she was sure Yallie’s breath had become a part of her so that it would remain with her…even when Ajita’s current form ceased to exist. Then she and Yallie could become part of the Earth.
Ajita would be like Rasjaurom, filled with all that she had consumed, forever patrolling Earth, only able to look at the stars and wonder when?
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