When I was younger, my mother would point out the constellations to me and tell their tales until the stars listened and changed their formation to weave the tapestry of her words. There's Hercules, battling hydra. That there? The big dipper. Southern Cross. Pisces, her star sign. Libra, mine. I always found it strange that in the world that ignored stars, tried to replace them, the item that represented me was used to weigh the value of my mother.

"Cain! Cain, wait."

Never thought I'd end up hating fucking Hercules so much. Never thought anything would frighten me more than the thought of a giant snake with regenerating heads until I saw a man blown into a million pieces and drift soundly through zero gravity.

"Fuck off, Praxis"

"I know we don't really get along but, Abel... saved my life. He's a great pilot. A great person."

"I said fuck off. I don't want to hear how fucking upset you are that there's no one to suck you off anymore."

What the sky actually is: a never ending battlefield in a never ending war. How do you back your enemy into a corner if there's no fucking corner to begin with?

"Cain..."

Back home there was a merry-go-round we used to get on and spin around in to have that feeling of being weightless, of the world spinning so fast time becomes meaningless and the clocks forget their promises to get you places on time; instead, they surrender their insides and turn backwards or forwards or just nowhere at all and the stars aren't constellations or stories or a fucking eternal battle between one man and an impossible enemy.

"Cain, he's not dead"

And then, suddenly, it comes to a hault and you climb off it and fight the urge to throw up not with dizziness but with relief that you're back on solid ground.

"What? What the fuck did you say?"

"Abel. He's not dead."

Doesn't work though. You throw up every time because there's finally something to hold you up. Thank fuck.

"You better not be fucking lyi-"

"No. He's alive."

"Jesus, fuck. Fucking hell."

Back home in the colonies, the stars are specks of light in an otherwise empty void.

"Your task names are Cain, and Abel..."

Up here, they're just giant balls of gas whose only purpose is to make you wish that your last drink wasn't highly flammable. But you run to them anyways, as fast as you can because we're all just moths to a flame in the end, unable to resist the burn.

"ABEL!"