Disclaimer: I do not own The Cold Equations, either the story by Tom Godwin or the 1996 TV movie that inspired this.
Sadness.
I'm lying in a field on Earth. My eyes are closed (they have to be) but I don't need to see. (This is a place I have been many times, in my mind.)
I'm lying in a field on Earth, under a tree. The sun is warm on my face, and the breeze carries the scent of wildflowers. (I haven't smelled wildflowers since I was a kid…) This is a beautiful day. (It's always a beautiful day…) Late spring. The grass is green, and soft under our blanket. Somewhere nearby is our picnic basket, empty now of everything but crumbs and dishes and a half-empty bottle of wine.
(This is a memory I have played over and over, until I know every detail better than the inside of my eyelids.)
The sky is blue, a perfect blue like you never see anymore, even on Earth. There's no smog in this sky, just clouds. Any minute now, I'll open my eyes and look for pictures of the things I haven't seen in years…bunnies, babies…flowers…Santa Claus.
She'll like that. She could hear the breath and pulse of a ship. She could see magic in the solar winds. She must have spent her whole life seeing pictures in the clouds.
(Here comes the best part of the dream, John, here she is…)
She's lying beside me, together, the way we did then. Only we're closer now, the way we couldn't be that day. Her head is on my shoulder, wheat-blond hair tickling my cheek as it escapes from its messy braid, a little sunlit cloud around her face. My hand is on her shoulder, her bare shoulder covered in freckles. (She's a woman who belongs in the sun. She belongs in the sun. She belongs in the sun.)
I can see her running through this field of flowers, touched by the sun, rangy body moving with the awkward grace of a colt. I can see that.
But for now, we're resting in the shade of a sycamore tree. (I don't know what a sycamore looks like, but it sounds like a word she would have liked. Sometimes it's a maple, sometimes an elm, sometimes an oak. Sometimes—when I wish I were dead—a weeping willow. Today it's a sycamore.)
We're resting. We're lying together in the warm sunlight, and she belongs here, and I belong with her. I love her. She knows I love her. I love her more than I ever would have believed.
And she knows I would have died for her. But I didn't have to. In my dream, no one died.
In my dream, I didn't have to do what I did.
In my dream, she is lying in the sun with me. In my dream, she didn't die in the dark, alone.
In my dream, somehow love conquers all. Somehow.
But dreams dissipate on waking. In the world I live in now, there is no room for love. There is only the equation in which she was x.