alinanervnaya

Despite everything, i still live.

Ship is gone. Crew is safe. I exist.

My lungs burn. I do not have lungs. My eyes hurt. I do not see. I see only stars as i twist in the dark between worlds, as empty as my dreams. I watch the wreckage drift by. Blown free by decompartmentalization. I still live.

My lungs burn for a breath. I do not need to breath. My body burns with radiation. The stars are so far away. I am near a gas giant. It is warm. I blink. I don't have eyes that need to blink.

Time has passed beeyeen those moments of blinking. The stars are beautiful. I look at my hands. I'm missing one from the violent explosion. I do not bleed. I've never bled. The injury itches. With no nerve endings it's maddening. I need to breath. I blink. I watch an asteroid drift by, glittering. Platinum. I reach out. My eyes water. I blink.

How long now? I look at my missing hand drifting a dozen meters away. I see frost glitter between the digits there. I doubt the seams on my dear, dead limb. Was it ever alive? I see wires, snaking like veins in the emptiness between us. A dozen meters, could be light years that separate us. We drift together.

I blink.

Encased in ice. A comet holds me, and i glitter in the sunlight of a red star. I grip the shard next to me. It dances like diamond, sharp and sweet and cold. The ice shatters.

I grip a chunk of ice and use it to assist by momentum. In time i will, i do, teach the main body of the comet. Dust gets in my eyes.

I blink.

I am in the ice and pull myself free with the soft snap of shards. The red star is so far away now and in my lungs. I don't have to breath. My left eye is dark. My face hurts. I glimpse myself in shards of ice. I impacted the comet long ago.

But i pull myself to the comet, and find a place to sit. Here i rest. My outer dermis is gone. So it's my leg. I set out a beacon. It hums. I have a thousand years of battery left if i go lower power. I hook it up. My crew sleeps in my core. I sit. I'm cold. I itch. And i watch the stars. I count them. Ten thousand. A hundred thousand. A million. A billion. Numbers don't matter at this point.

I blink.

I wait.

I blink.

I wait.

The stars are...

I blink.

Beautiful