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"We will be landing soon."
In the airlock, the living possessed corpses of Zip and Specs poke and prod playfully at one another, piloted only by plant matter and unknown fungus.
Valentina reclines on the top bunk, and draws the makeshift curtain she made long ago to shut out the pain that witnessing them caused. All the clothes she'd packed, strung up together with interconnected shoestrings. Back then, watching their deaths had eviscerated her, wormed in and nested parasitic to suck all the joy out, the joy the mission elicited.
She never cared much about the ship's size. It's small, sure, but she doesn't mind; she has become one with the vessel, piloting it like an extension of her own body, like her ship is fleshbone and ready. But it might be... nice, to step out on land again, to breathe surface oxygen.
Yes, her Spirit radiates from within. I know.
Do you miss it?
"Why ask me if you already know?"
Do you know?
Valentina looks away. She places a hand over her chest, drumming her fingertips over her breastbone.
"Missing it has no greater purpose," Valentina says, her words weak and wet. "It is better if we let that go."
So you do miss it.
Valentina lets out a sharp laugh.
"Perhaps."
There is nothing wrong with it. You must embrace it first if you are ever to let it go.
Valentina turns over on her side, prayers her hands together. "I am tired," she says. "We will be there in approximately fifteen hours. I should be well-rested when I greet Dr. Caulder."
Very well.
Her eyes flutter closed. She pulls the blanket over her head, tries to drown out the noise of Zip and Specs's game of rock paper scissors. On the backs of her knees, inside of her spacesuit, she feels tender, small zaps like kisses run all along her flesh as she falls asleep, her Spirit's gift. The zap-kisses travel upward, over her hips and stomach and breasts. Her Spirit is the one, eternal comfort she has left in this universe---she shouldn't need to be comforted anymore, she is supposed to be an ascended being, but she is held down and suffocated by things like missing and wanting and solidity. It's just too much.
She evaporates into her Spirit's touch, and dreams of Russia.