Writing Prompt – 03-21-2014
Origin: “The Day We Left Earth” by Alex Cornell.
If you’d like to write something from the prompt and post it in the comments, feel free to. I’d love to read it.
(Also, I was wondering if you like these…? Should I continue posting these prompts, or cease?)
Red Lettering 
Well, I think the character prompts are cool exercises! Unfortunately, I might not have time to do them, but they certainly aren’t harming anything. 🙂
Inspired by the prompt:
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We sat under the stars that night, long after the others had gone to bed. The moon stared down at us, unblinking, blank, a painful reminder that we were a long way from home. I did not bother to start a conversation, and neither did she. We only sat, while the space station slipped over the horizon, over our heads, and out of sight, as it did every night.
“Do you know what today is?” She asked.
“Yesterday,” I said. That was all. She looked at me, at the fingers I had curled in a fist around my medallion, and nodded.
It was probably around one in the morning, as near as I could figure with our inadequate earth watches.
One year ago, I thought. One year ago my world fell apart.
I expected to feel something, but I didn’t. Nothing but the same quiet resignation and the growing love for this world that had kept me going through the long nights. The fear that had driven my this far had faded to a cold feeling in the very pit of my stomach, and I lived by something else now; A sense of responsibility, maybe, or love.
“Think we’ll ever get back?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
Only I did. Oh, how I did in that moment. How I wanted to run right back to the Gate and dive through, risk my life running through the enemy soldiers that guarded it, and just escape this frighteningly comfortable nightmare. I would leave them alone, let them all fend for themselves just to see a car again, just to walk on pavement instead of thorns, just to sit in an air conditioned room instead of threadbare canvas tents.
“You know,” she said, staring up at the unearthly stars so hard I knew she was trying not to cry. “It’s funny. The things I miss are the things I always took for granted.” Her voice lowered, grew wistful. “I would give anything for a bath right now. A hot bath, with… with bubbles.”
“And rubber ducks?”
“I’m serious!”
“So am I.”
For a moment, she said nothing, staring into the vast expanse above us. Then her hand was on top of mine, and her eyes on my face. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Think we’ll ever get back.”
I counted the stars in the King’s Constellation before I answered. By the tightness of her hand on mine, she probably thought I was carefully considering her question, and would give her a thoughtful, probably accurate, answer.
Thirty-three, I said silently, and turned to her. “I don’t know. If we survive the war, I guess we can go back.”
Her eyes reflected starlight, making it seem as though she held the hope of the world in her heart, and it shone through her eyes.
“Yes,” I said after a moment, captured by the hope in her face. I took her other hand. “Yes, I think we’ll get back. One way or the other.” Then, because I couldn’t help myself, I asked, “Do you have someone waiting for you there?”
She nodded. “My mother. I- I didn’t say goodbye, you know.”
“None of us did.”
“Is there someone you would have said goodbye to?”
I tried to remember faces and names, but I came up empty. “No.”
“No one?”
“No.”
She pointed out a light in the sky, and we watched it until it disappeared from sight.
“I’m so tired sometimes,” she whispered. “You know? Just tired.”
I knew.
“I think we’ll get back,” she said. “I know we will. And until then… Until then, I guess we’ll just take things one day at a time.”
~ ~ ~
Caiti, this is AMAZING! So so so cool!
Wow! That is awesome!
Elisabeth Sullivan
http://myheartfeltreflections.blogspot.com/
This was in reply to Caiti Marie’s story. 🙂