Silly little human

Maya laid comfortably on the small white bed in the middle of her cell. Through the glass on one side, she saw a concerned face pressed to it. “Your verdict is being discussed. Are you not scared?” Said the woman on the other side of the impenetrable glass pane. “I should have ended you myself when I had the chance. I paved the path of tragedy for both of us.” She continued.

Maya laughed. She analysed her small, white accommodation and walked up to the glass. She raised a hand to meet with reflection of her human friend's. “Eari! My dearest. You have done me a huge favour. You rescued me off my ship when I had lost all hope. Do me one more and not pity me.” Maya's huge green eyes glistened with sympathy. Her sharp wide face had all but regret. The yellowish of her skin had faded in the windless enclosed structure. The countless experiments of humans had taken its toll on her body and mind but she spoke with such a tenderness, Eari, at once regretted her statement. Eari returned her gaze with a frustrated glare.

“Are you not concerned? You landed in the midst of a human colony. Lucky enough to survive, nobody else saw you. Yet you are stuck here. Do you not wish you had left when there was a chance?”

“You silly human. I was flying mindlessly in the midst of universe's most gallant creations. Nothing allured me.” Maya sniffed into her bare yellow shoulder. Her loose strands of dark hair shone under fluorescent light. She looked as deflated as the first time Eari saw her trapped under the rubble of her spaceship, struggling to breathe yet unwillingly to survive. “There was this dying star, glowing like anything. It only reminded me of the amalgam of vomit had one eaten fifty berries of variant colours.” Eari chuckled. “I saw no good, human. No love, no life worth living. Then there was you, grossed by my physical appearance and still tried to pull me free. You held my hand. I see now a doomed space colony. Humans, far away from their planet, that died with their dying sun and I pity you folks. But some of you are lit.”

A guard framed in a metal suit entered the premises. He held a small cylinder and handed it to Eari. “What is it?”

“The verdict. You have 40 minutes.” He said to Eari but his eyes lingered for a second on Maya. She couldn't see his face but she knew he meant it when he said, “I'm sorry.” Rapidly tapping on the metallic floor, he left.

“It says you are to be launched with utmost guarded suit, into the atmosphere of TS6-29.”

“It means—”

“It means you'll live.”

“—my entirety of life, revolving around a lifeless planet.” Maya grimly stated the obvious. She shook the sorrow off, “It can't be melodies and salsa for all of us. Right?”

“It should have been. How was I so naive to know? There was never a place for love and will never be. I wish one of us was brave enough to kill another. Or should I do it now? I can save you the pain.”

“And give up the remnants of my life that I plan to spend amongst stars and planets, recalling all the memories we assembled in this little life. If it was the fate of one of us. I'm glad I'm the one to taste it. My planet was dead. So were everyone who existed there. Where else am I to go if not with you?”

“How can you not hate me? I have let you be an experimental animal. I have offered to kill you. For one second, just hate me. And ask me if I love you the way you do.”

“Mercy kill is most painful for the one who has to do it. It will save me the eternal pain but you will spend your life in misery. It must not be a lover’s last gift to their lover.”

“How do you even know I love you?”

“I am afraid to ask that question and equally afraid to know. There is a gallant shine inside of me. Like a nebula in space. It will fade if you say any more than I wish to know.”

From the cold glass where their hands meet, three inches apart, a glow of yellow light left her palm. It consumed Eari like a warm hug.

Maya was bound into an obnoxious space suit. Only a helmet with glass showed her the grace of nature. With hundreds of troops and many suited people, she was escorted out of the prison chamber. Bright glint of artificial sun glazed into her sensitive eyes. A chain on her waist rattled behind her. A grave rocket waited for her. There was a huge crowd of reporters gathered to see her launch into space.

She heard the chain behind her hook to something and she paused.

“Keep moving.” Someone spoke authoritatively. She turned around to see a familiar pair of eyes through the space helmet. Eari had joined her on the adventure. She was pushed forward. There were no words between them but the smiles of a future together. For the first time, Maya had a question for her silly human and she knew she would never get an answer to it.