On the night I met Rana, we watched the stars together. It was on Venus, atop the great citadel of Queen Maia. That was the night we fell in love.
She stood erect, silhouetted against the night sky, her blue skin glistening, shining in the darkness. Without looking at me, she said that she had always wondered what the stars looked like from the surface of another world. She asked if they sparkled as brightly, if they seemed as close, if they carried on Earth the connotations that they carried on Venus. She asked if the stars were special.
I said yes, and then it occurred to me that we two people on different planets had nevertheless watched the same stars all our lives. I from Iowa had seen them just as she had from Venus. And yet until that night we had never known that the other existed. She thought it was sad, but I insisted that it was happy. It meant that even before we met, when we were separated by the cosmic void, we were still connected. It meant that people aren’t as far apart as they think, because how can you see the same thing and be far apart? It meant that no matter how distant from each other two people may seem… they are still close.
Now, alone in Escape Pod X, I find myself staring at the stars with regularity, and hoping, praying that wherever she is, Rana is doing the same.
