It was sundown when the smoldering remains of his crashed ship spit smoke into the sky like a mess of a trail.
He'd been out for awhile, since before the sun started setting, but he started to stir when the dying light reflected off the hatch of the cockpit, into his eyes.
Out of habit, he tried to remember, or guess what day it was. He felt out of his element the pounding in his skull was louder than most the thoughts he could conjure up.
He seemed to manage figuring out his ship wasn't where it should be, or moving like it should be. Maybe he assumed the worst and he was crashed, even without fully understanding why he assumed as much.
He groped behind him for the emergency pack beneath the seat. He pulled on it too fast and and the sudden loss of momentum sent a jolt through his system. He twitched and hardened but he caught himself.
He relaxed, and told himself to slow down. When he brought it to his chest by the strap, he hugged it to himself like you might hold a stuffed animal or a pillow. You might feel the comfort but it aint really there.
He punched a few buttons in the console out of habit before realizing the computer weren't there. He looked up and with one arm he released the emergency hatch valves one at a time.
The other arm still clutched to that bag.
When he slid the hatch outward he scrambled to unbuckle himself from the useless vessel. It took him a minute, maybe two, to get every belt unbuckled.
He could feel the strain of getting up in his whole body. The joints in his knees screamed to the rest of his legs. His elbows sang a harmful song to his arms. A good number of his body parts just screamed at his brain, made existing that much louder.
More intrusive.
With a lot of effort, and some wishful thinking, he managed to haul his own carcass up and over the side of that cockpit and out onto the rocks making his body scream louder than he previously reckoned it could.
He was hurt alright, he was hurt bad. But he could keep going if he had to, he knew he had to. He just needed some time.
Some time and some real rest that wasn't just blacking out.
Laying on his back, he was coughing up blood. He didn't like the taste. Like sucking down a molten cup of plumbum and choking on it.
Like he weren't no angel, he thought to himself. Maybe like he weren't no devil neither.
As that there sun went down he could see the stars better. He could see the moons even better after it went down for the night.
He was disappointed, though. Disappointed there weren't no angels at the end. Just the stars in the sky and three moons out of ten he didn't understand.
Thoughts like that could get to a feller. Especially when you start questioning yourself, questioning your health and plain old thinking this might be the end for you.
I'll tell you out and out, it weren't no end for him, though he mighta wished it mighta been. But that'da been too easy, he might later think to himself.
Nawh. His end wasn't yet, but he wanted them angels. He wanted 'em to tell him to close his eyes, and everything'd be alright.
Under another star, a woman timid in her movements was confident in her resolve. She made her way towards the spotlight at the corner of the alley with little else to see but darkness and the shadows of things that may or may not be in her way.
Given that she couldn't see all that well, she moved forward still. She could clearly identify the ramp, the railing and even the garbage can at the corner of the connected buildings.
What she couldn't identify was a vague lump of something that seemed out of ordinary to the rest of the scene.
Perhaps a pile of trash, or the sleeping habits of a strange animal.
She'd identify it better if she weren't so far away, she thought to herself, and so deeper into the darkness of the alley she went.
And that sound, that sound of something squealing she couldn't identify, but it was something she identified as being under some real stress. She didn't think it belonged to the fuzzy figure she didn't understand, but she understood it as something that was out of the ordinary. Something might oughta be investigated.
Her hand softly caressing the butt of her pistol, feeling on the handle like she was about to give her a tight squeeze.
And she did, gripping it ever so tightly with every finger on her hand except the trigger finger. Resting it on her holster over the trigger guard.
Maybe less like resting. Maybe more like anxiously trembling on.
But that was her business and not none she'd ever tell us about.
Her careful footsteps broke glass and it echoed through the alley like a stray cat outside your winder just a-howling at the big hand in the sky.
The sound carried. And suddenly she felt very vulnerable.
Are you okay, she said out loud. Do you need my help?
The high pitched mewling just got louder, and so did the white noise and static whisper of dead thoughts splash across her head like a popped water balloon.
When she saw what she was supposed to see, her eyes widened. Her pupils dilated.
The static in her soul started to dissipate like baby spiders catching the wind.
Before her was herself, and it was deader to her than it is to you or me when it comes to Abraham Lincoln.
Her bones were dancing in the wind, one particle at a time.
Her eyeballs were dried up and eaten by maggots and fleas and whatever else decided to devour her at the immediate loss of her soul. What was left of a brain was less of a brain and more like moss on a tree stump.
It isn't good what happened to her, she reckons. It isn't good at all.
And when she sees the aftermath of her life displayed before her in such a manner she draws her pistol and her cautious trajectory reverses.
When he sat up on them rocks underneath them stars he knew himself a few things new and a few things he forgot but remembered.
He knew the state of his physics was an obstacle at best. He knew who'd gunned him down and he knew he was sought after.
He knew that after waking up after that sleep, them stars were prettier than he'd ever seen 'em before. He knew that part of that was his perspective, and part of that was because he felt truly alive for the first time that he'd done in a good while.
There was a new frontier ahead - to him, at least. And he's have to figure out how to get along the best he could.
With little to lose and uncertainty in the distance, he got up and pushed forward. Hoping for some kind of justified result to all of this.