This…nature…and fresh air and trees and everything is why my parents risked the journey and sold my future for a better life. Just because I understand their reason, doesn’t make it easier to swallow that I’m expected to have three kids while doing everything to ensure the colony succeeds. If it fails, my children will be left in the rubble, scraping by, but hey, at least there’s plenty of clean water to drink.
Did the people back on Earth realize how hard it was going to be?
Maybe not now while we have supplies from Earth, but in ten years? Or twenty years? There’s going to be a period where we forget how to do things. Where technology is lost because it can’t be repaired. So even though plenty of our things have beensimplified, we can’t make microchips or plastic components. Our cameras and tablets, our ships and our clothes are going to break, and if we aren’t used to living without them, we’re going to be screwed.
I shudder, not wanting to think about the day all flights are grounded, when all transport is by hauling a cart.
Hrad glances at me, and I force a smile. How do I share my fears of the future when the very life I’m afraid of is how his people live now?
Or that I don’t want to damn my children to a life that is worse than mine?
I’m not even sure if I want children. I want to fly and explore.
I want the kind of relationship I saw growing up. Even though we were raised with the colony expectations and needs at the forefront of our education, we grew up surrounded by traditional families. With two parents who either loved or tolerated each other.
And that’s not possible with the imbalance.
I am a little envious of the women who found love with another woman, who will create a family together. Of Hrad and his easy acceptance of a male lover because having a female mate was never part of his life plan.
And now the only mates he can choose from are weird looking humans.
He waits for me to catch up, and our hands brush.Are you alright?
Just thinking.Is he sensing my disquiet?
About?
I don’t answer immediately, because I’m not sure how much to share. It’s not as though we’re friends or even close colleagues. But in this moment, it seems as though we are the only two people in existence. That our lives crashed together from acrossthe stars for this moment. Which is a stupid, romantic, and ridiculous thought.Life. The colony. The future.
So nothing of consequence.His lips curved as he glances at me.
My heart does a little bounce, and I wonder if it’s the first time a man has looked at me without wondering how to get me naked. Hrad isn’t trying to find a way into my bed. Instead of answering his question, I throw it back at him.What about you?
Much the same.
Is he expecting me to share first?
He lifts up a branch for me to duck under, and the skin contact is broken. Now I am walking in front, following the trail, which is leading us toward the river.
His fingers ghost over mine, and he expands his answer.I have been an outsider my entire life, and I’m finding it hard to believe that the colony is my home. I expect to be kicked out.
Why would you be kicked out?
Because I am banished.
I stop walking and turn toward him. His chest is a solid wall of muscle. “The leaders won’t kick you out for being banished,” I whisper.
He wraps his fingers around my hand. I know it’s only so we can talk silently, not because he wants to hold my hand. But aren’t we far enough away from the settlement that we can speak?
They may not. But that is how I feel. It is hard to make a home when you have never had one.
So you were contemplating grabbing me and joining this tribe?I hook my thumb in the direction of the settlement. I want to laugh and turn it into a joke, but the sound will carry.
He snorts and shakes his head.It is a lie to say that I hadn’t contemplated that option. That is how I was raised. However, I don’t know this tribe, and they do not know me. So why shouldI give them anything? I cannot buy a place in a tribe with another’s life.He taps his chest.That does not sit well in my heart.
He words prove Charlie and the other doubters wrong. They expect Hrad to betray us. I’m glad that enough people believed he wouldn’t.
So we both carry doubts about colony life, but nowhere else to go.
