Grata Domum Stars of the Beginning

Procidens Spem

Wind rushing flames burning and light flashing was all I saw out the screens of Aqua. I knew the jump would do this, the intre crew knew, but Kion had to be right and the “hero” and all he did was mess things up and not want to have people think that he was stupid.

We fell faster and the red flower that took hold of Aquas titamuim nose danced brighter and the petals grew bigger soon knocking our engine down and had us fall blind as we braced for the fall and impact with the ground. I prayed for us to land in water. Please let there be water on this living being that we would one day destroy, just like we did earth.

A film of white flooded my eyes and a small movie that was my life played. This was the first time that I had seen the cursed existence that I had called life and now it was all over. My life was now about to end and I blame it all on my brother, a sad excess of a man that tried to be something that he was not.

I came back to the scene in front of me to see purple and yellow and then a flash of white, and next nothing, nothing, but black… I woke up sleeping on a box that held a month of rations. My head hurt and I am not sure, but I might have broken something. The ringing and pounding in my head and the throbbing in my nose was unbearable, a cold wet drip came from the inside of my nose and a crimson stained my new suit.

The cool and damp suit stuck to my skin stinging the now visible fractured bone that penetrated past the cage of skin where it was to be. The once lilac clear water now tinting to dark magenta as red seeped from my wond. The spinning of my head warranted the regurgitation of my consumed food that was given to me. I cried as I became aware of the broken ship in front of my eyes, the corpses of 100’s of people lying dead all over the crash site.

I lay on this supply crate hoping that one, just one would wake. For what seemed like hours I stayed motionless until a sound from below the waves came to my ears. I had heard stories of creatures in the water that could sink ships and rip people to shreds. I swam as fast as my body would allow me.

I reached the shore of black and turned to the tainted waters to see what looked like a person looking back at me. I backed away from the water as much as I could not knowing what it was or what that thing could do.

I saw it swim closer slowly, second by second till I saw it swim back under the water. Ripples formed from where it once was following the bubbles that popped one by one as that thing descended deeper and deeper.

A shadow looming over me ; the silhouette of a man, one that I knew and one that knew me. I looked at the face of adorned scars and the years of training that stained a bruised body, a slight stubble that was now noticeable to the world we had found ourselves in…

His deep brown eyes welled with tears as he looked down. His lips curved down to a frown as he looked at me, the waterfall of emotions fell from his irises as he shook from the shock from he saw the face that few him here.

“You're alive,” he said. I stayed looking at this man, he was worn and had suffered so much in the few hours? Days?

“Leo?” I asked “what happened?” he sobbed more as he thought back to the crash and everything that happened after. “The ship…” he began to c***k “it went down” I stared at him. He began to move to patch my leg up as best he could “I woke up after 2 days and began to follow protocol” his hands moved to my nose “and out of all the supplies and crew only half made it” I look him straight in the face “what about Kyle” I asked.

Leo looked at me as I did him and said “he is at the base” out of all the people the worst one was still alive. “He lost a lot of blood and he lost a few limbs” he smiled at the thought. In pain I laughed, tears fell from my eyes “He finally got what he had coming to him!”

His red hair flew in the wind as he lifted me off the ground, his arms felt safe “ How long was I out?” he stopped and flinched “ two weeks” he began to run as I stared in shock. The man that I grew up with looked me in the eyes and told me that they left me for dead, and did nothing, but bary people they thought dead.

The air stung my now banged wound as we moved faster and farther from the crash site, the black tree trunks and yellow falling leaves that decorated the purple sky and coved the exposed opening at the base of a brown covered mountain. The rock here was brown much like the brown dirt on the planet surface that we had just left a few weeks ago.

The once mournful mission to escape the dying planet I called home that many thought that would fail, had not. Many however like my brother had been injured or like my “friends” thought me dead. I clung to Leo without noticing as something caught my eye; It was huge!

Someone or something was moving and moving fast! Before I could get a good look at who or what it was Leo dived feet first into the mouth of the cave, the initial force and momentum plus the added weight caused Leo to slide violently down a red path that wet completely dark as the white sun faded from view.

The sudden fall made me wince as I felt something bump my broken leg. The soft noise of water dipping from the stalagmites on the cave ceiling and the running of a purple glowing river water came to illuminate the dark cavern and show me the beauty of this other world that we had come to accidently. The lovely color was calming, just like the outside forest. That was a wonder; though I could just be biased purple and black were beautiful colors to me. Leo never moved once we stopped falling and not once did I bother to ask why, when I did he placed and hand over my mouth to silence me and looked up to the mouth of the cave, making sure nothing had followed us into the dark purple abyss.

Minutes felt like hours as we sat in the darkened silence never did either of us talk or make a sound, the sound that did reassure me that something was there above us was the sound of footsteps in the opening of the cave. Leo’s red hair glowed in a magenta light as he looked up. His eyes; the fear that he held in them… he looked sacred. What could scare leo? What could scare the top graduate of the Orion's belt training academy?

A soft, but firm voice left someone's mouth above us. “ Nemo hic adest, tu fortasse vidisti clumer Vincere'' it was a masculine voice that caught my breath and held it in my throat “Nescio Viggo fortasse recte es, sed postquam lumen obcaecando a paucis abhinc hebdomadibus aliquid periclitari nolo”

The voice of more people faded from the top of the cave and how I wished that I could see who that voice belonged to. As the voices moved farther and faded from ear shot a soft humming noise from that beauty of a voice was heard and it almost compelled me to move and make noise to let it know that I was down here.

I turned to Leo to see if he had heard the voices and to see if he wanted to investigate, but he held his fear reddin gaze, but I stopped myself from asking as he released a breath that I didn’t know that he was holding. The quick flow of air that moved down my body reminded me of my position on the ground, in Leo’s arms and the movement and sound of his feet sprinting down the glowing river, but once more he halted as he looked back and saw the silhouette of a man that… I couldn’t be seeing him right. Could I? Maybe I hit my head in the fall. But he was big! Really Big