15. perfect blue
These days, Billy spends most of his time flat on his back, staring up at the sky.
His daughters tease him mercilessly about it, especially when they're the ones helping to haul his aging self off the ground to go in for the night. Cyndy, her dark eyes flashing, pulling faces and her younger sister Laura just shaking her head. They are a picture, both grabbing a hand and hauling to get him on his feet. They're both small like their mother, so when he's finally standing he has to lean over to kiss their heads.
He finds it infinitely strange that he's made it to the old age of sixty. Twenty some years of running, fighting, and surviving have not been laid to rest by fifteen of relative peace. Billy knows this with every bone in his weary body.
His daughters don't ask why he spends so much time staring at the sky. They'd been twelve and nine respectively when the rag-tag tattered fleet had finally made landfall on this quiet world. Their earliest memories are of playing under sloped, metal ceilings and hustling into containment shelters at the first sounding of an alarm.
No, they don't ask why he can spend hours and hours staring up into the blue, blue sky. Sometimes, when their children are being watched by their husbands, or off at school, one or both will settle down next to him and stare too.
