Eliot Schrefer

The Brightness Between Us

Izaac Richards

I'm left with the fact that Father and Dad had a bunch of babies that filled them with love and hope, that those kids all died except two of us, and I just threw it in Father's face because I want to go On an adventure.

What an awful and brief and magnificent existence. The big mystery of our life on Minerva is how quickly it can turn from grimy to majestic and back.

Something about being in sudden company after all this time has made me soft. Or maybe I've changed irrevocably in these weeks of recovering from having my spacefarer dreams ripped away, and now I'm facing the proof of it. Maybe it took being an island for a few months to realize I don't want to be an island forever. 

"Oh," I say, disappointed. How insipid. The words are far inferior to the canvas.

Maybe we could help each other with that feeling after all. I could show Ambrose just how welcome I am to his donating. I chuckle at his charming, ridiculous righteouS. ness. Then I turn on my side, toward him. 

I watch the rise and fall of his narrow chest, the ribs that encase that fragile heart. My traveling companion, the future of my other selves. I turn my attention back to the sky. Somewhere out there, maybe right now, millions of years away, in the void of space, a version of me is being woken up next to a version of him, these two beings who are intimately connected and nothing alike. 

"Take my hands," I say. If I'm about to die, I'm going to hold those hands of his at least once. I extend mine, and slowly, fumblingly, Ambrose finds them in the darkness. I pull him in close, like the step of a dance, and then bring us to the roof. We take the steps cautiously, stumbling only once. We pause at the heavy door leading outside. Ambrose's hand is warm and strong, with some tension sweat. I can't resist: I graze my lips against his palm, close my eyes at the wonder of being so close to his skin.

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