(I loved this prompt but found myself drawn to the perspective of a visitor rather than the owner- I hope that’s okay!)

[1/2]

It’s funny how reminiscent the alarm on the cryosleep system was to my old alarm clock back home. Maybe there’s just something about waking up in an utterly alien space that encourages the mind to cling to any shred of familiarity. Given my circumstances, though, I wasn’t in a position to complain about a rude awakening. Considering the number of digits in the date readout on the main console I’d had more than a solid night’s sleep.

Based on the other cryptic messages displayed there I was able to piece together that some time ago the ship’s navigation system had encountered a fault. With a functional fusion core and warp drive, though, the vessel had stayed its course until just now, when the power supply had finally dwindled to nearly nothing. The remainder of the ship’s meager energy had been used to initiate the reanimation sequence… and, apparently, to perform an autonomous landing. On what, though? More perplexing still, the outboard sensors were reporting a breathable atmosphere. Out here, after flying for all this time… the odds of running across anything solid, much less habitable, must have been several trillion to one. And yet, the ship certainly seemed to be stationary. What could I do but head for the airlock?

I pulled the gas exchange lever and after a moment the hatch slid aside with a hiss. I stepped out into… a parking lot? Well, not exactly… there weren’t any lines marked upon the sandy soil or anything like that, but in this open field my ship had taken its place alongside several others, neatly lined up in front of a small, surprisingly inviting building. I took another wobbly step forward, trying to find my footing under the paltry gravity of the planetoid, and found myself wondering if it was possible to dream during cryosleep…

I hardly realized I had walked over to the building until I stepped up onto its porch and, leaning on a simple wrought iron table, turned around to look across the landscape. Never, not across all my previous spaceflights, nor all my nights spent stargazing, had I seen even a shadow of the spectacle now before me. This little world seemed to be adrift off the plane of two spiral galaxies whose spindly arms locked them into a dance unfolding across cosmic time. Those sprawling forms filled the sky before me and yet I knew them still to be unimaginably distant. I must have been looking upon countless worlds, more than I could ever conceive of, all of them forever beyond my reach. I could have stood on that spot transfixed forever had the silence not been broken by a bright jingle behind me.

“Why don’t you come inside, dear? You must have had a long journey.”

The woman smoothed her apron and fixed a strand of her graying hair behind her ear as she expectantly held the door open for me. Looking inside I could see several more tables scattered a bit haphazardly beneath the warm lights that cast the inviting glow into the lot outside. I nodded and entered, stopping to look around at the other patrons, a dozen perhaps, in all, a few of whom smiled warmly at me. Surely no faraway alien civilization would have built a cafe into such a distinctly human style… I mean, where did the wood flooring even come from? The only thing green and leafy anywhere in sight were a few tangled vines spilling from the planters that sat atop the bookcases lining the back wall.

“Something to drink?”

Still feeling rather like I was standing in the middle of a dream, I looked blankly toward the bar where the owner now stood. With a little chuckle, she pointed above her head, and my gaze followed her direction to a menu, scrawled in chalk beneath a heading: THE LAST DREGS - STEEPED IN THE STARS.

“I… I’ll have coffee with milk, please?”

Sinking onto a barstool, I began to try, at last, to pull together some recollection of what had happened before I entered cryosleep.

“It’ll come to you. Just give it time.” I raised my eyes again and found the woman standing at the other side of the counter, a glass jar of coffee grounds in one hand, the other outstretched toward me. “Morgan,” she said.

“Oh, um… Casey,” I offered in return, extending my hand which she embraced warmly before returning to work.

“Give it time,” she repeated. “We’ve all been there. All lost much… yet, all found this place.”

I sat in dumbstruck silence for a moment, focusing only on the quiet clinking of Morgan’s utensils and the dull murmur of conversation in other corners of the cafe. A man seated at a table by the window, one of those who had met my gaze when I first entered, stood and walked to one of the bookshelves where he withdrew a volume before coming to join me at the bar. A bracelet of crystal around his wrist jingled as he placed the book on the counter.

“I’m sure everything’s a bit hazy,” he began. “Just start with what you know. What was your homeworld like?”

How does one describe their own planet? How do you put into a few words something that was literally your entire world?

“Well, Earth is… small, I think? Rocky, mostly covered in liquid water… one large moon, orbits an average yellow dwarf…”

“Sure, sure… I mean to say, though, what was it like? How did it feel to be there?”

“Oh.” I paused to consider the question, still at a bit of a loss. In my mind I could see the whole globe through the porthole of my ship… the last thing I had seen before entering cryosleep. My whole range of experiences had happened on that one distant speck… how do you summarize that without some other point of reference?

He smiled sympathetically at me and began to page through the book, stopping when he came to an image.

“My world was called Alediel. Each morning when our suns rose, our nebula would light up and scatter all the starlight. The first warm rays would fall across your face and the universe would come to life all around you, as though it wanted to show you every color it could muster all at once.” He turned the page. “Our people built great structures of glass and crystal, and each evening they would catch the glow of the setting suns. Each day seemed to stretch out forever until the final shard of refracted light disappeared, leaving only the dim glow of hazy stardust hanging in the sky.”

“It’s beautiful!” I gasped as he showed me the book.

“It was beautiful. One of our suns was preparing to go supernova, and we had the means to send but few off of our world. This book and I may be all that remain of what we built,” he said. I looked up aghast, but rather than appearing somber his expression was serene, and the crystals dangling from his wrist threw the lights above us back across his face as dancing spectra. “To lose one’s world is undoubtedly sorrowful,” he explained, “but there is little which lasts forever. To know that the memory of it all lives on in this place brings me a measure of peace.”

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