Nomad

Hers were a spacefaring people. Their ancestral lands were the void between stars. Their stores were replenished through scavenging and bartering. Their legends told of a people who once knew soil and sky, but dreamed of more. In Gallena’s eyes, they had failed.

So it was, that when a dashing young navy officer asked for her hand and promised a life of abundance, she readily agreed. And that was what he gave her. Soil and sky and a home on a single planet.

She did not know what to do when he died.

It was a battle that had taken him from her, a positron ray that left nothing of him but dust. There was no body to bury, no airlock to vent him into the void’s embrace. A ceremony was held, small and hollow.

And then she waited.

She did not know what for, but that was what it felt like. Waiting for a future to find her. The house loomed about her, the sounds of the planet pounded at her walls. One day, she got tired of waiting.

She boarded a ship bound for nowhere.

It was quiet, despite the full berth of passengers. The only sounds were shallow breaths and the familiar hum of a fusion engine. The stars sped past, faster and faster, shifting blue to white to red in the space of a blink. And then the FTL drive kicked in and with a shudder the stars vanished. And for the first time since she landed on that soil beneath that sky, all she could see was black and all she could hear was her heartbeat and all she could feel was silence.