.

Days Go By

When Cassie woke up, nuzzled awake by Noah, the first thing she noticed was that Squires had worked well into the night, getting almost half of the soon-to-be shared bedroom with Larisa built. She smiled to herself when she realized that there was nary such a powerful motivator as the prospect of some good lovin'. After the others had shared the story about the trading party that had visited, everyone had gone to bed, except Squires and Larisa, still busily toiling. Well, one toiling, one keeping the other company.

"Morning," Procene came to sit by her. "Sleep well?"

"Hey, morning," she greeted back. "as well as can be, the accomodations being what they are."

She smiled thinly. "Well, maybe the future of climatized and comfy bedrooms isn't that far off. Nothing's certain but we do have hope."

"Thanks to you."

Procene hugged her knees, staring into the embers of yesterday's campfire. "I'm no more valuable than you guys are. We wouldn't have an immediate food source without you, long-term ones without Procene and Odile, or shelter without Squires. And we're not eating things raw thanks to Chef. If you consider that, then maybe the stump-armed girl who sits around reading books isn't all that special." She extended her good hand and rubbed Noah on the snout.

"Don't sell yourself short," Cassie reminded her, "If we want to survive, we need to get tech up and running. I don't think wooden shacks and campfires will cut it when the winter hits. We don't even know what we can expect. Might be arctic temperatures, no one knows."

"I don't think so," Procene said carefully. "This kind of vegetation wouldn't survive if winters were that harsh. But yes, I do think we can expect some serious cold."

"Well, I better start making myself useful. Those animals don't hunt themselves. Well, unless they get mad and suddenly charge at us, I s'pose." Behind them, Chef and Squires resumed work on the storehouse.

"Let's hope they keep that to a minimum."

She chuckled. "Yeah. How's the hand?"

Procene held up the remains of her arm, looking at it intently. "It's… still a nagging pain."

Cass was surprised to hear it was healing so quickly. "Really? Just that?"

She sighed. "Honestly? No. It still hurts immensely. Probably will for a few more weeks."

Her heart sank. "Aw, geez. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'd rather be alive and hurting than dead and, well… not."

She briefly put her arm around Procene's shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "We'll, we're glad you're still with us too. And not just because you're useful. If we'd let you die, we'd never have gotten to know such a kind-hearted person, and that would've been a waste." She briefly thought of the bisected girl in the crashed longsleeper, and a numbing wave of sadness washed over her. If things had gone differently, maybe she'd have been able to say the same to the blonde girl too. Now they'd never know her.

"Everything alright?"

She returned to the present and said, "Yeah, fine, just… thinking of the people who didn't make it."

Procene stared off into the distance. "Oh. I… try not to."

"Me too. I don't always succeed."

She sighed. "Me neither." After a moment, she said, "but then again, we are alive, and the greatest injustice we can do to those who died is not to fight and work for the lives we have, and not enjoy them as much as we can."

There was a thought she agreed with. "Absolutely. It's the greatest respect we can give them."

She felt Procene's hand take hold of hers. "We've got a good thing here, Cassie. And I'm grateful to be part of it, every single moment."

"We're happy you're here, too."

They both fell silent, looking out at the horizon and enjoyed the moment. At least, until Larisa stomped by, kicking up dirt on her way to the fields.

Cassie left the others to hold the fort and struck out on her own again, determined to keep the meat coming in. It was the most useful thing she could do at the moment, the others looked like they had the other needs of the colony nailed down, so she could concentrate fully on providing meat. The vegetables would be ready to harvest soon – some of them at least – but until then, they needed to keep their strength up. Plus, they couldn't just eat vegetables. The luxury of principle that had existed on Terra was no longer relevant here, and they'd need stuff like vitamin B12 to stay healthy and keep their strength up.

She wandered around, enjoying the day as Noah danced around her feet, occasionally yapping in good cheer. There weren't many animals around today – or at least not many who didn't notice Cass before she noticed them – but she was confident she'd find something before the day was done.

She crested a hill and looked back at the colony, now just a barely perceptible bunch of small dots far away. Procene had been right – they had a good thing here. And as long as no internal conflicts arose, they'd do just fine, Chef's pessimism notwithstanding. She sat down and squeezed one of the packaged survival meals empty in her mouth.

The taste was bad enough, but she really wished she had a damn table to eat at. She made a mental note to remind the others to fashion a table and a few chairs.

Procene had been a godsend. There was no doubt about it. The others, too, really. They'd been lucky so far, only encountered friendly people. Well, except the two slavers that had chased Odile, but were slavers and rapists really people? She supposed they were. Who knew what kind of horrible things had led them to this life? Again she wondered what it had been like had she managed to save the girl in the longsleeper. Would she have been a valuable addition to the colony too? A kind, cheerful soul who said nice things, made jokes and rolled up her sleeves when she had to? Maybe not. Speak not ill of the dead, but she could've just as easily been a mean-hearted shrew or an air-headed spoiled brat. But she didn't think so. Certainly not the first. Maybe a spoiled rich girl, sure, but not some rotten-personality troublemaker. Her eyes had been too kind for that, even in her dying panic. Even on the magazine covers.

Noah nudged her from her musings, panting with her tongue hanging out. When Cass didn't immediately respond, Noah took the hem of her sleeve between her teeth and tugged.

This got Cass' attention. She'd smelled or seen something. And indeed, when she followed Noah's gaze, she saw a magnificent doe standing near a large puddle, taking a drink.

As much as it grieved her to shoot such a beautiful animal, she still shouldered her rifle and fired, the beast dead before it hit the ground.

Noah barked and bounced in victory and Cass modestly joined in, making a quick pirouette. She tied a rope to the beast's neck and got ready to haul the animal back to base. Before she could begin her return, however, she saw a brightly-tailed streak flash across the sky, going down between the trees a few kilometres away. She saw a flash of light, and a few moments later, the sound of a short thud reached her ears.

Shit! What to do? Leave the dead animal and go for the crashed whatever-it-was? At the risk that her prize would be gone or eaten by scavengers? Or stick with what was certain and drag the food they needed back to the colony, leaving the crashed object be, no matter what it had been?

Again, she thought of the blonde girl, dying naked with her insides bright red in the grass and made a decision.

Hoping the deer carcass would still be there, she grabbed her rifle and ran, telling Noah to follow.

"Larisa! Larisa!"

Cradling Bob the cat in her arms, she turned towards the voice of Odile, in the distance. He stood there waving excitedly at her. What was he being all giddy about? She nudged her chin at him and made a questioning face.

"Come see, come see!"

The guy was nice and all, but knowing him, he was probably just being awed by a frog or a particularly shiny rock or something. Larisa thought it was endearing to see how he'd find such joy in small things, but when it meant she had to come all the way over to see them, she was a bit less enthusiastic.

Still, she trudged over to him after looking back at Squires and Chef busily completing the storehouse. Her eyes briefly brushed past the first shack, with Procene inside it, doubtlessly thinking up more contraptions to ingratiate herself with. Larisa had to admit that she'd probably been wrong about her, and that if she was untrustworthy, she'd proven to be so by now, but she still had a weird feeling about her. Something didn't sit right. She was too likeable, too friendly, too kind-natured. It still made her uncomfortable. Like she had something to hide.

"Hey! Larisa!"

Right, Odile and his stupendous discovery. She scratched Bob's head, eliciting a modest purr, and trudged over to the other side of the field.

"Look, look!" He was pointing down at the plants they'd sown.

She looked where he was pointing and bent over, carefully so as not to discomfort Bob. Peering at the rice plant, she saw what he'd been so excited about. A few small grains, greenish-white, were visible.

Okay, this was good news, definitely. It meant not only that they'd probably be able to harvest soon, but it meant they'd be able to harvest in the first place. It meant their plants bore fruit, which was by no means a certainty. She felt a smile forming on her lips and let it happen, standing up straight again and using her free hand to answer Odile's high-five.

"This is a relief, isn't it?" Odile spoke her thoughts out loud. She nodded and gave him a thumbs up. Bob the cat wriggled free and jumped off her arm, distracted by whatever it was cats were always distracted by. "I mean," he continued, "you worked so hard the past days, this is all you, Risa!"

She let out a startled urk! when he threw his arms around her and pulled her against him. He immediately let go and stepped back, his face red. "Oh, geez, sorry, I just got… uh, I got carried away."

She made sure to show he'd made her seriously uncomfortable just now.

"No, no, you don't… you don't have to worry, I didn't, I didn't mean anything by it."

No, he probably didn't. and she was well aware that while she wasn't a fan of physical contact except in some specific circumstances, others thought nothing of giving people hugs without warning. They just didn't stop and think others might not like being hugged that much. She held up her hands and reassured him it was alright.

"Y- yeah, sorry, I was just… You know. Excited."

She nodded to show she understood.

"Anyway, you uh," he grinned and scratched the back of his head, "You don't have to worry about me having like, bad intentions. It's not um, you know. It's not like that."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Let's uh," he cleared his throat, "get back to work." He picked up his seed bag and resumed pulling weeds.

After standing there for a moment and not understanding, she shrugged and returned to her part of the field.

The air burning in her lungs and her legs lashed by the thorns in the undergrowth, she ran on, ignoring the screaming of her tired muscles. Noah darted alongside her, occasionally giving her a look before setting her eyes straight ahead again.

Between the tops of the trees, Cass saw the smoke plume, which kept her on target. It felt like it didn't come closer, but she reminded herself that it did, even if it didn't look like it. She tripped over a root, made a harmless tumble through a bed of creepers, snatched her rifle again and resumed her run.

Every second could count. She had to suffer the powerlessness and the grief of watching a person die with nothing she could do, and she was going to do everything she could not to have to go through that ever again. And the only way to do that was to run like hell.

She deftly leapt over a fallen tree, now seeing the smoke between the trunks of the trees instead of having to follow it drawn against the sky. Almost there.

Please let me be on time.

On she ran, her legs slowly turning more and more to rubber with every leaping bound she took.

"Hey!" she shouted hoarsely. "Anyone there?"

Finally, she reached the crash site. A large metal cube, about twice her height, lay askew between the trees, one corner buried deep in the loose earth. The trees themselves had been splintered and smashed apart, the ones around the crash uprooted by the shockwave, leaning crooked against their brethren.

"Hey!" she shouted again, lifting her rifle and panting rapidly. "Friendly here! If anyone's… there… come out with… your hands up."

But then she noticed a metal plate screwed against the side of the cube. She couldn't read the smaller print, but the heading said, in large black letters

MANIFEST

Ah, shit. This was cargo. She'd ran like an idiot for god damn cargo. No one was injured, no one was dying, no one was even there. God damn it, she'd left a valuable animal carcass for a wild goose chase. She was such a damn idiot. And now it'd probably be dark by the time she got home, because there was no way her body would tolerate her sprinting all the way back. And all that because she lost her head thinking there might be someone dying. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at her own stupidity.

But hey, she realized. Hey, hey. Cargo. This might not have been a useless run after all. There might be something useful in there. Something incredibly valuable, even.

Ignoring her entire body screaming at her to sit down and take a damn breather, she approached the cargo cube. It was still intact on her side, but when she stepped around it, she saw that one of the sides had bent and torn, partly folded outward, with the cube's cargo spilling out of the container, onto the earth.

What she saw made her jaw go slack. Then she felt it slowly rise in her lungs. There was nothing she could do to stop it, her body no longer responded to any commands. It started with some mild hiccupping, her shoulders hitching along, but her lungs began working more and more rapidly, her shoulders hitching as they pulled in air in a stuttering staccato.

Finally, it came. Completely numb, she heard herself let out bouts of hysterical, screaming laughter as she fell over, her arms around herself. She shrieked laughter, even though her mind didn't think it was funny at all, it was purely a discharge of all the tension and exertion, her body letting it all go in the face of such useless panic and stupid hysteria over nothing at all.

She gasped for breath in between her bouts of screaming laughter, until finally the hysteria lessened, the contractions of her lungs becoming less agonizing and cramped, and the guffawing finally stopped, leaving her to lie in the loose earth, panting through a burning throat.

After lying there for a minute or two, Noah licking her nose, she got back to her feet. Her muscles, her lungs, her throat, everything hurt.

Eventually, she mustered up the courage to begin the walk back to her hunting spot, her hysterical laughter replaced by silent tears of utter fatigue as she left the cargo cube behind, along with all its cargo, the earth strewn with countless wooden prosthetic feet.