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My dome is better than I could’ve imagined.
I couldn’t really appreciate it at first, of course, seeing as I had, like, every disease. I spent the first month or two bedridden; those first few weeks, Rocky had to literally spoonfeed me because I was too weak to move my body beyond the muscles it took to open my mouth and swallow.
But now that my strength is returning and my body isn’t trying to tear itself apart, I have energy to spare to take it all in. It’s a pleasant twenty degrees Celsius during the day and between fifteen and seventeen at night, depending on whether it was time for artificial rain that day. There is a day and night cycle to begin with, to settle the ruins of my circadian rhythm after the mission messed it up completely. I have a house that would genuinely not be amiss on Earth, made of some kind of Eridian wood and complete with a bed, a wardrobe, a kitchen, and a bathroom. It’s almost more foreign how normal it feels, how, if I ignore the way gravity pulls at me twice as strongly, I could honestly trick myself into believing I never left Earth.
And oh, then there’s the beach! I don’t even fully understand how they made the waves, how they cooled the water down to a temperature I can comfortably touch, but I have a regular-degular beach right outside my front door, and it’s there that I spend most of my time.
Back on Earth, I was more of a homebody, having to be dragged outside by my friends whenever we met up. I watched my shows and documentaries over microwave dinners, and the most fresh air I got was when I took my kids on class trips to some kind of museum or research center.
I can certainly see what I’ve missed now. Having lived so close to the West Coast all my life, I kind of wanna kick myself for not taking advantage of it sooner. I’ll probably never get the chance to smell the Earthen sea again. There’s something about the ocean here that I can’t pin down, but even with my perfectly isolated atmosphere, it smells just the slightest bit different.
I have these thoughts sometimes. Little morsels of grief for all the things I didn’t realize I’d miss, simply because there’s so much for me to miss. My kids, obviously, and my apartment, and my friends—that’s been on my mind ever since the memories emerged from the fog of my coma. But there’s smaller stuff, too. The smell of rain on dry earth. The warmth of sunlight on my skin. Those rare star-strewn nights in polluted California.
I could not be happier to be where I am now: alive, first and foremost, but also with my friend, on an alien planet that has yet to stop being absolutely fascinating. I don’t think I’d go back if I could. I dread the day when the Eridians get tired of taking care of me like some kind of weird pet. But the grief is there. Dosed minimally enough for me not to break apart from it, but it’s there.
Hence why my first walk along the perimeter of the dome has me stopping every few minutes to gawk.
The truth is, Erid is not all that different geologically from Earth. The shore of the beach slopes gently, tapering out into deeper and deeper water. The sand is made up of tiny grains mixed with shell fragments of creatures that resemble crustaceans. Farther down, where the curve of the dome comes into view, the sand fades out into gravel, which then fades into boulders.
One day I’ll have Rocky take some with him to analyze. He’s as educated in the ground he walks on as I am on the ground back on Earth—which is to say, only slightly more than the average person—and I would love for us to learn something together, rather than passing species-specific knowledge back and forth for the sake of understanding the other.
But that’s for another time. For now, I’m still too busy geeking out.
Rocky stands by while I squat by the ocean, now framed by slippery rocks instead of gentle dunes.
“Gosh, look at this,” I say, running my hand through the shallowest part of the water to stir up the gravel there. Rocks of all shapes and sizes shimmer under the clear water, and a part of me feels warm at the sight of it. Had I spent more time near the sea, this view might’ve felt like home.
I pick one up that speaks to me, a cheerful ochre-yellow, and examine it in my hand. Rocky watches from a frankly criminal distance.
“You like these why, question?”
“They’re pretty,” I tell him. I know Eridians have a concept of beauty, but it’s hard to explain why something is visually appealing to someone who doesn’t have eyes. It kind of boils down to well, it just is. “It’s my favorite color. You don’t get this color of rock often where I used to live.”
Rocky hums his acknowledgement, nudging some rocks with his foot. “We call this ♪♫.”
“The color or the rock?” I tease, earning myself a low staccato noise not unlike what a human might sound like when faking a laugh.
And then, from one second to another, he straightens. I sense the shift in the air, and as I rise from my squat, Rocky's gaze follows me very, very slowly.
“What?” I ask.
“Say name of this again,” he says, and I tilt my head. He’s never needed me to repeat something before. His hearing is immaculate, and he’s never once forgotten something I’ve told him.
“It’s a rock.”
He doesn’t move. He stares at me with his featureless face until even that feels more unsettling than eye contact.
“Grace,” he says flatly. “You are fucking kidding me, question?”
And all at once, I understand.
I nearly slip on what I think might be moss as my laughter folds me in half, forcing me to rest my forearms on my knees to avoid toppling over. I wish I could tell him that I can explain, but I really can’t.
“You name me after rock, question?!”
I nod breathlessly. “I’m sorry,” I say, though even that is a stretch. “But—But look at you, bud. I can’t even tell the difference.”
I hold my yellow rock up to him. The color is obviously different, but he can’t see that, so my point stands.
Rocky looks at me like he’s never wished more for my neck to be at a more throttle-able height to him. “I lie all this time,” he says. “Word for Grace is actually name of waste from Eridian orifice.”
“Nah.” I toss him the rock, smiling wider when he catches it out of reflex. “You wouldn’t do that to me. And look, rocks are cool! When I first saw you, I thought you were so hecking cool. Terrifying, sure, but—think of it as a token of my admiration. Plus, Rocky’s a great movie.”
I really hope the projection deck is still intact. There’s no way I’m not watching Rocky with Rocky. I’d go back to space just for that, hang out in Erid’s orbit for a bit where the Hail Mary is still whizzing around. I love Erid, and I love Adrian and my students and every new person I meet, but sometimes I kinda miss when it was just me and Rocky. Bit of a wild thought, considering how stressful and uncomfortable it was at times.
Rocky grumbles his displeasure, though he can’t keep it up for long. Something about his posture shifts, giving him away. That, and the fact that he still hasn’t let go of my rock.
“Hey,” I say, picking up another one—a flatter one this time, more like a disc than an uneven chunk. The ocean is stiller here; the waves are focused right where my house is. The farther you get from it, the calmer they become, until the surface is near flawless. No point in creating waves where I can’t hear them, I suppose. “Do Eridians skip stones?”
“What, question?”
I grin, turning the stone in my hand. There are many things Rocky excels at, things he absolutely kicks my butt in; it’s always exciting to find something he cannot do. Even if he picks it up as quickly as he does everything else, I have just over a decade of practice on him. Not even my kids could beat me at this.
“Watch and learn,” I tell him, and I cast the stone into the water with a sad little plunk.
“Impressive,” Rocky says.
“Oh, shut up. Let me try again. Must be the gravity.”
“Yes,” says Rocky, with all the faux encouragement of a parent humoring their child. I actually hate him. He’s my best friend and I hate him.
I pick up another rock and weigh it in my hand. It must be the gravity. The usual amount of force works twice as hard on Erid, and whatever bumps and ridges the rock has are amplified because of it. Maybe a shallower angle will do the trick.
I throw again, and this time the rock plip-plips twice on the surface of the water before sinking. Rocky turns slightly away from me, angling himself to see—or, well, hear—better. It’s far from the longest skip I’ve ever done, but it’s my new personal best in Eridian gravity, so that’s something.
“What.”
It’s not even a question. It’s pure astonishment. Take that, Rocky.
“You still think rocks are lame, bud?” I ask, and Rocky holds out a claw to me, curling impatient fingers in his direction.
“Give,” he demands. “Give rock. Which rock you use, question?”
I smile, something warm and comfortable growing in my chest. I half-expected him to chuck my yellow rock into the water with all the confidence of someone at the very bottom of a learning curve. Instead, he holds on tight to that one, going as far as to shift it over to another claw when I hand him a rock that’s better suited.
“It has to be flat and round,” I tell him. “And you gotta throw at an angle. Now, on Earth I always did twenty-ish degrees, but apparently things are different here. We’re gonna have to figure that out together.”
“Yes,” Rocky says, bobbing up and down. “Yes, figure out. Then compete.”
I laugh, high and genuine. “You just can’t leave a good thing be, can you?”
I say that as if I’m not a little competitive deep down, too. I would never admit it out loud, but during lightning rounds back at school, I’d catch myself rooting for one or two kids in particular. Not to mention—and this memory occurs to me right as I have that thought—that my roommate and I would spend hours trying to out-drive each other in Mario Kart back in college.
That, too, is something I’ll never have again. Not the people I keep remembering one by one, nor the easy entertainment that came with Earthly technology. In an absurd, truly unfitting rush of melancholy, Coconut Mall plays in my head as I look for another stone and show Rocky how to throw it.
I can’t bring myself to be sad, though sometimes I really do try. A part of me doesn’t want to be okay with all of it because it feels like glossing over all the good times, all the things I’ve lost, first by being sent to space in the first place, and then by choosing to stay here on Erid.
Then again, to try to hold on to whatever wisps of grief pass through me would be to gloss over this. Rocky managing a single skip and all but bouncing with joy, tugging on the leg of my pants. The knowledge that there’s good, perfectly balanced food waiting for me when it’s time for Rocky to leave. The comfort of knowing that there’s nothing at all I need to do, no money I need to make, no to-do list to chip away at. The deep, gradually growing satisfaction of knowing that everyone whose life would’ve been destroyed is now safe, including me and Rocky. He’ll go home to his mate, and maybe tomorrow they’ll both come over, and then I’ll take my own little xenonite suit and go teach Eridian kids, and it’s just this, on and on and on in a slow, endless stream.
It’s peaceful. Not that my old life was particularly exciting, but I’ve certainly had enough excitement on the Hail Mary to last me a lifetime. I’ve done enough good in the world to not feel bad for taking a break, so now I can just… rest. Exist. Take each day as it comes, because there’s really, truly nothing that’s nagging in the back of my mind save for those few instances of reminiscence.
So yeah. I like it here. I would’ve made the choice to come back for Rocky even if I’d known my life would suck from there on out, or that I’d die the moment I helped Rocky set things up for his return. But it’s nice that things are good. It’s nice that we’re both here, and that we can have moments like these.
Rocky makes a stone skip three times, and just for the sound of utter glee he makes, I think I’d do it all again.