I’m hearing more animals, too, but I swear it sounds like they’re actually talking so I figure it must still be the shock.
Mostly there’s just darkness.
There’s just darkness closing me in.
And that’s exactly what Bradley’s gift was for.
There’s a dry enough spot in the middle of the raised clearing, not great, not perfect, but enough. I set down the gift and feel around for some twigs and leaves, getting a few damp handfuls and piling them on top.
I press a button on the gift and step back.
The damp leaves and twigs burst immediately into flame.
And there’s light.
Light across the little clearing, light reflecting on the metal of the ship, light that includes me in it, standing here.
Light from a fire.
Bradley gave me a fire box. One that will start a fire nearly anywhere, in nearly any condition, with nearly any fuel.
Start it to give a light against the darkness.
And for a while it’s all I can do just to stare at it until I feel myself shivering, and I sit down closer to the fire until I stop.
Which takes a long, long time.
The fire for now is all I can see.
Soon, I’ll need to see what supplies I have left to live off of. Soon, I’ll need to see if any of the communications equipment survived so I can try and contact the convoy.
Soon, I’ll need to take the bodies of my father and my mother and-
But that’s soon, that’s not now-
Now there’s only fire from the fire box.
Now there’s only a tiny light against the darkness.
Whatever’s going to happen next can wait.
I don’t really know what my mother was saying, I don’t know that hope is something you can give to someone else, something that you can take.
But I said I would, I said I did.
And so I sit in front of Bradley’s fire, on the surface of a dark, dark planet, and I have their hope, if not any of mine.
Except the hope that it’ll be enough.
And then I see a lightening in the air, in the sky above and behind me. I turn to watch this planet’s sun rising, and I realise it’s morning, that I’ve made it to morning.
That I’ve had enough hope to make it to morning.
Okay, I think to myself.
Okay.
And I begin to think of what I need to do next.