#god i'm sorry about the inconsistent punctuation i wrote this on like two computers and three programs

[adventuresofzoeganov]

Stranded

1,773 words

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Zoe cursed and kicked the hull of her broken-down, smoking spaceship. Well, more of a space-boat anyway. She instantly regretted it, as a searing pain shot through her foot and up her ankle. She inhaled sharply and glared at her ship. Boat. Which only smoked and creaked sadly in response. 

Zoe looked around and threw up her hands. 

“Where the hell am I even?” She was standing on a rather regular beach, at which rather regular blood-red waves were lapping. Behind her, rather regular dunes obscured the rest of the land from her view. 

The map had last shown her plummeting through the atmosphere of some planet at the edge of the Kryx-System, but that couldn‘t be right. There was no water anywhere in the Kryx-System. Her expression turned sour as she realised that maybe the blood-red waves weren‘t water. God she hated the Kryx-System She glanced at her shipwreck again. A little red light was blinking somewhere in the midst of the smoke. 

“Fuck you,” she whispered. The red light went out. Zoe propped her hands up on her hips and turned around to see if there were any interesting new additions to the landscape since she’d last looked. The beach stretched on into the grey horizon in both directions. She climbed the dunes to get a better view. There was a forest nearby, and when she squinted, she could see a little hut behind the first row of trees. She looked at her wristwatch, which she had repurposed to a communicator long ago. (Don‘t ask her how. It‘s not important.) The blue light indicating some sort of network was still tragically off. No chance of calling Martyn.

Zoe sighed a tad too dramatically and stomped towards the little hut.

~

As she entered, the floorboards creaked. “Okay you little spooky house,” she said. The door shut behind her. It was cute. The smell of mould hit her nose, the kind of mould that only grows in wet places, the kind you would sometimes fatally confuse with moss. There is no such mould on Earth, and that‘s very good.

The entrance led to a small living room, dust covering the sofa, the armchairs, the bookshelves. An abandoned, pelt-covered mug stood on a small table, emanating the horrific smell that haunted the hut like a ghost. Zoe stepped carefully through it all, trying not to touch a single thing. Trying not to breathe unnecessarily. Who knew what kind of spores flew through the air.

Despite the dust and mould, the room looked rather peaceful. As if someone had left for a Sunday walk five years ago and never returned. 

In all the muted colours, something caught Zoe‘s eye. Next to one of the bookshelves stood a little commode with a glass door. Its inside was tiled with mirrors, reflecting a quiet, pulsating light. It was leaking from a jewel, carefully placed on a silver tripod, of a colour Zoe had never seen before. She approached the dresser and crouched down to get a better look at the jewel. As she studied it, the inside of the jewel seemed to stretch out, reflect her own eyes a million times until they blurred to a dark, deep nothingness, into which she fell, seeing all that was, is, and will be, the horrors and the wonders of creation and destruction, she saw the secrets of the universe and heard a voice, older than time itself, say Death is an illusion, Time is an illusion, the Self will persevere and the Self will be there to see the End of all that Is, and she understood, she understood everything, and she saw that she was both insignificant and the only real Thing there had ever Been.

Zoe blinked and stashed the jewel in the depths of her jacket. She wiped her hands on her pants, her fingertips tingling. She sniffed. A blinking blue light on her wrist drew her eyes away from her own reflection and she shook her fists in triumph like a little kid. “Yesss!“ She stormed out of the hut, barely noticing the shadow moving in the corner of her eye, and called Martyn as soon as she had reached the wreck again. 

~

“You are the dumbest person I‘ve ever met, Zoe,” sounded Martyn‘s tinny voice from her communicator. Zoe clicked her tongue.

“That is not true! What about… Mick Spindle?”

“Mick Spindle would‘ve known the difference between Kryxian and Immenish.”

“Well sorry that I‘ve only been learning Kryxian for like, two months? That could‘ve happened to anyone!”

“Choosing to say the only Immenish word that‘s also an insult in Kryxian doesn‘t just happen to people, Zoe.”

Zoe shrugged. “It happened to me.” Something like a sigh crackled out of the loudspeaker. 

“Yeah, a lot of things happen to you. Anyway, could you describe the damage to your Tonner?”

Zoe took a step towards the wreck and peered inside the fist-sized hole. The smoke had mostly vanished.

“Well… there‘s a hole in the… left side?”

“What do you mean, left side?”

“When you‘re sitting in the ship, it‘s on the left. Sort of behind you.”

“You mean portside.”

“That‘s what I said.”

“Anything else? What‘s inside the hole? How deep is it?”

“Uuh… about five centimetres deep, there‘s some wires inside… blue and green. Some are definitely fried. That‘s probably bad.”

“Depends on how important the wires are. Can you try and turn the entire ship on again?” Zoe peered at the hatch on top of the ship. It was ajar, a tiny trail of smoke curling its way outside.

“I don‘t know if it‘s safe to go in, Martyn.”

“She is a Tonner, Zoe. She can survive anything. That was the only reason I lent her to you.” Zoe pulled a face and mouthed only reason I lent it to you.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No.”

“Okay, there‘s another way to try and fix this. I think they only hit your cooler, which should be fine to fly without, at least to the next workshop, which shouldn‘t be far… where exactly were you again?” The distant cracking of wood made Zoe‘s reply die in her throat. She spun around and scanned her environment. She could only see the tips of the first trees from here.

“Zoe? Everything okay?”

“No,” she whispered into her communicator as she scrambled up the dunes as quickly and quietly as she could. “I think I heard something.” She lifted her head over the dune just so she could see the edge of the forest. The gaps between the trees looked darker than before. There was no wind stirring the grass atop the dunes. Another crack. Zoe ducked below the dune again, pressing against the sand. She could feel it pour into her shirt. 

“Zoe,” whispered Martyn. “I am locating the Tonner. You have to get out of there as soon as you can. Kryx can be very deadly.”

“No shit.”

“I‘ll send you the route to the closest workshop as soon as I have your location, okay? You just have to-” Zoe pressed her hand over the loudspeaker as she heard another crack, this time louder. It was followed by more and more cracks and rustling, like footsteps through a forest. Zoe lifted her head again, slowly. A face was only inches from hers.

She screamed and pushed herself down the dune, skidding down the sand. Her feet sank in, she fell over and crawled down to the beach. A wet breeze was blowing down her neck, like the devil‘s breath. She didn‘t dare to look behind her as she ran to her ship. Her hands searched frantically for her gun, she never kept it in the same pocket, she really should get a belt.

Zoe reached the ship and climbed up its battered hull, to the hatch, and let herself fall into the seat. She hammered on all the buttons she could reach, and after a few seconds only filled with her panicked breathing, the ship started humming and the lights blinked on. She locked the hatch and ignored the little red warning light. It was labelled Cooler. She laughed hysterically. “I‘m so fucking stupid!”

A dull banging on the hull made her focus again. “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,“ she murmured while pressing buttons and shifting levers she didn‘t know if she needed. Finally, she‘d hit the right combination and the windshield was cast over by the green space map, the ship began to vibrate and finally, finally lift off. An ugly scratch and a primordial howl accompanied her as she made for the atmosphere. “So long, sucker! Wohoooo!“ The Tonner rattled and creaked, but it kept speeding towards the stars.

~

“Um, uh… Zoe?” She started in her seat.

“Jesus, Martyn, forgot you were there. I‘m back in orbit, well almost! There was this weird thing in the woods, ugh, you should‘ve seen it.”

“Yeah, about that… I can‘t locate you.” Zoe frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the Tonner doesn‘t show up on my radar. Is she sending the signal?” Zoe checked the screen in front of her.

“Yeah?”

“That‘s… weird. Are you out of the atmosphere yet?”

“Almost. In five, four, three, two, one-” The ship dived into outer space and stars surrounded her. The rattling died down as the vacuum enclosed her, and Zoe breathed out. On her right, there was the giant Tirs with his pink cloud formations, and not far off she could see his moon Liren. This was the Kryx she knew.

“Ha, there you are! I‘ve got- Zoe, what the hell have you gotten yourself into again?” Zoe sighed.

“What are you upset about now?”

“There‘s no planet next to you, except for Tirs.” Zoe raised an eyebrow and turned on the back camera. “There absolutely- hm. There‘s no planet. What the fuck.”

“We can worry about that later. You need to get to the next workshop. I‘m sending you the route right now.”

“Oh yeah, Tricia says I have like, five minutes left to live.”

“Who‘s Tricia?”

“The board computer.”

“Yeah. Ok. Tricia‘s right. And Zoe?”

“Yes?”

“Kryxian, not Immenish.” Zoe rolled her eyes and turned off the communicator. The route Martyn had sent her now popped up on the screen, and the ship shifted to correct its course. Zoe looked at her reflection in the windshield and brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. She winked. The reflection winked back. Back on the planet that didn’t exist, a creature called its master for the first time in ten years. Inside Zoe’s pocket, the jewel glittered with the light of a thousand burning stars.