She watched him trudge, heavily up the path towards her. Her heart squeezed involuntarily, she felt her adoration flood. Her love had grown slowly, over time; sneaking up on her without personal awareness. Now, if he wasn’t with her she missed him dreadfully, but it hadn’t always been that way, oh, no, at first she’d found him so rough around the edges. She’d thought he was hardly human, despite his form, she’d thought him crass, stupid, of a lower life order. She cast her mind back and the memory of how she’d felt just after the accident clouded her mood.
The airfield sparkled brilliantly in the face of the setting sun, light bounced and shone off the bright silver ships. Twin purple moons glowed in metallic reflection; playing a dark game of catch across the surface, spinning up their gleam into the night sky to chase the stars into orbit. The scene was breathtaking; it spoke of hope, a dream of a future. She looked out at the spangle, the aria of tomorrow, and felt the auspiciousness of the moment grab her gut into a fisted clench.
The planet was dying. Floods, earthquakes, land and glacier slides were the only news apart from the protests. But, the protests had grown sparse on the ground with calamity abounding without respite or solution. The earth was crumbling like a piece of clay in a delinquent child’s quick, spiteful hands.
There were two schools of thought, and the weirdest thing was that the sentiments carried across racial and class lines; those that wanted to attempt escape from devastation and those that were too scared or set in their ways to try. Sarah counted herself as one of the revolutionaries, an open minded liberal who was determined to board one of the many Flight Ships and sail out into the blue, with nothing more than a scientific notion to back her dispatch. Excitement bubbled in her chest despite the doomsayers' predictions.
A perilous path, a foray into the black of unknown dimensions awaited the brave Voyagers, as they were known. Many preferred to reject the predictions of annihilation, they were going to stay; await their fate, whatever it might be.
She didn’t know very much about the concept or the background work that the men of science had put into the mission. Nevertheless, she did know that they planned to take their expertise, their technology and as much knowledge as they could muster with them to the new world. The world that awaited on a planet similar to their own, a demarcated target of their waning ambitions. A space in the dark reaches of the Milkyway, a tiny blue and green planet. A dot on the map of the universe.
She’d watched her beloved home grow small and insignificant through the porthole in her cabin on the day the ships were finally launched. A crowd of Stayers had come out in numbers to predict their demise, but still on a wistful note, many cheered at the ships rose into the night. They knew that they’d never see the Voyagers again and that their opportunity was lost on the breeze of conclusive flight.
“Into the void, without a rope, without a noose to bind your lover.” The words to the popular song sprung unbidden into her mind as the ships traversed the gray boundaries of known space. Flying into nothingness has its perks and disadvantages, time stood still on the boards of monopoly, and on the targets of a thousand dart boards. Bingo became a thing, can you imagine? But it did, there was not much to do. Stars were beautiful to look at, but no sane human could simply claim to be a star watcher ad infinitum, now could they?
Then the punctured blue vents in her cabin began to relay evidence of a fault. The ships had reached their destination, but the atmosphere was not predictable. The scientist collaborated and assuring noises were made, but the ships spun on their axis, each and every one, and then they were descending through the stratosphere towards a canopy of verdant green, a jungle unsimilar to anything known to man. The motors whirred.
A cacophony of animal grunts and buzzing insects greeted her waking moment. She lay, prostate, on a patch of wet mud with a circular view, through bending boughs of a very blue sky. A magnificent, hot white sun shone in her ambit, warmth radiated into her bones, which she realized were damn sore when she tried to move them, even slightly.
Then there was an earth shattering boom, the ground shook under her ribs. A shockingly hot wind blew across her body and the sun disappeared behind a cloud of dense black dust. Her wrist device beeped, she drew it up to her ear, slowly; awkward movement edged with pain.
“We’ve hit a volcano. Take cover. Take…” The sound drifted into the abyss, and was gone in a blip.
She was on her own in a black swirl.
She looked up and saw a wild-haired man bearing down on her. His eyes were close set and he sported a protruding brow and had a massive jutting jaw. He grunted. She fainted.
Then she was in a cave of sorts, or so it seemed. The strange looking man was trying to wet her tongue. He had cupped the water in his hands and was attempting to dribble life into her mouth. She fainted.
Then she was sitting, blanketed in his arms staring out of a cave at a million stars in the night sky. He grunted and held her like a delicate porcelain cup.
Time moved, the seasons waned and she grew accustomed to the danger at the lip of her cave. Massive animals, reptilian in form roamed the new earth. Their danger was apparent in her keeper’s fear.
There was no light. They slept in darkness. He fed her raw nuts and strange herbs. There was no system, and still the sky was clouded by volcano dust.
She slept and her strength returned.
One dark and dismal day she decided to change their existence. She picked up a bark, a stone and a stick and began to grind them, much to her keeper’s consternation. But when the sparks of light sprung from the stones his wonder was complete. Fire erupted, a trick of the witch from the stars. His reverence was astounding and that’s when she realized the value of the gift that God had sent into the new world with her and her kind.
She smoothed a section of sand outside their cave and drew the plans’ for aqueducts and pyramids.
The new world exploded into their dreams.
A note aside
Perhaps aliens landed on earth during the dinosaur era and were responsible for darkening the sun and changing the trajectory of life here on earth with their superior knowledge