Kanata stopped drifting. He reached out, and his gloved hand pressed against hers. Through the two layers of fabric and metal, she felt nothing. But she saw the conviction in his posture.
She looked at his faceplate. Behind the reflective glare, she could see the shape of his jaw, the scar near his eyebrow he’d gotten from the worm-beast on the forest planet. He was not the same boy who had boarded the Astra five weeks ago. None of them were.
It had been eight days since they’d escaped the crumbling remains of the old military base. Eight days since Funicia had cried for a mother who wasn’t coming. Eight days since Kanata had grinned that reckless, impossible grin and said, “We’re going home. Together.” -DB- Kanata no Astra
Aries laughed, a brittle sound. “I’m mapping the gravitational lensing of the next jump. If we miscalculate by even 0.3 degrees—”
“What if we’re wrong about everything?” she asked, the question slipping out before she could tether it. “What if the people who sent us out here—what if the lies are bigger than we think?” Kanata stopped drifting
“Aries.”
She flinched. Kanata’s voice, clear and warm as a terrestrial summer, cut through the suit’s comms. She looked up. He was floating twenty meters to her port side, untethered, his silhouette sharp against the banded rings of a gas giant in the distance. But she saw the conviction in his posture
Home. The word felt foreign now. Was it the planet they’d left behind, with its warm sun and cold betrayals? Or was it this—this creaking, patched-up ship where every ration was counted and every shadow held a secret?
