by Kaylim
Yallie laughs sadly, “we’re all made of the same stuff: starstuff, and that’s what we’ll eventually become again.”
Ajita holds her breath, she’s not sure she understands what Yallie is trying to explain, but her proximity is making her head ring and her blood burn. They stop spinning and the stars are painted over them, the lines continually connecting stars, and the constellations are almost all the formed. A line shoots between them, and seven stars brightly glow, the Great Bear coming into being around them. Yallie leans forward…
…and then pulls back abruptly.
Agitation chases away the brightness in Yallie’s eyes, and she rubs the back of her neck with her hand. She stares hard at the floor.
“I’m going to be leaving soon. For good. Forever. So you have to…you have to remember before then. Before tomorrow night.”
“Okay,” she says, and nothing else seems appropriate.
Yallie curves her lips, but the gesture is strained, “I don’t know if we can meet again like this. If I can arrange it. I won’t have any more excuses.”
“So kidnap me,” Ajita says.
Yallie brings her head up fast.
“Where did you learn a word like that?” Yallie’s asks, boggled.
Ajita laughs and shrugs, because this feels familiar, words and phrase popping into her head.
“They’re going to start getting suspicious,” Yallie says, “I have to get you back to your bunk.”
And it all feels so illegal, Yallie leading her through unused corridors, gripping her hand so tightly the bones feel like they might turn to dust. When they’re at the end of their journey, Yallie grabs her shoulders and looks her in the eye. Her expression is tinted with doubt, but when Ajita offers her a raised eyebrow, the doubt melts away and she breathes out deeply, as if steeling herself for something.
“I don’t know what to say to make you remember,” She says, “so just…remember this.”
She places her mouth against Ajita’s.
Ajita gasps and can feel Yallie’s warm breath brush against her face. Heat rushes through her body, and she surges forward, prolonging their contact, enjoying the softness of Yallie’s mouth, never knowing that her insides could burn the way they do, that her body could feel such a way. Yallie raises her trembling hands, and cups Ajita’s face, brushing against the soft hairs on her nape and cheeks.
With a sigh, their lips part.
Yallie is searching her eyes, desperately seeking something.
“What was that?” Ajita asks.
It’s another familiar thing, more wonderful and familiar than anything else so far, and it almost seems routine. But not boring, not forced.
Their lips are wet, and their cheeks are flushed, and Ajita can’t believe she hasn’t learnt about this before.
“A kiss,” Yallie says.
“A kiss,” Ajita slowly repeats.
“I researched it,” Yallie says, and her eyes are sad, “on this planet, in many culture of ancient time, it was a form of affection, greeting, respect…or a show of love.”
“And kisses always happen on the mouth?”
“Not always.”
“Then why do we kiss on the mouth?”
Yallie pauses and then, “It is where we draw breath.”
“Besides through our noses.”
Yallie chuckles, “Sometimes we think so alike. I never noticed. I knew we were kindred in a way, but….”
She draws back, as if remembering herself.
“We consume sustenance through our mouths,” she continues her explanation, “so when you kiss a person, you are saying they are your sustenance.”
“There’s a word for that,” Ajita says, and something is tickling in the back of her brain.
“A metaphor?”
“How did you know?” Ajita asks, because while it’s something familiar, she can’t remember hearing it before.
And maybe that’s what Yallie means, when she talks about remembering; she is referring to why everything is familiar but Ajita can’t recall the exact memory or reason it seems familiar. She knows she’s done things thousands of times before, but can’t specifically recall a single instance. It’s like she just…woke up with a life in her head. Knowledge preprogrammed to be there.
Yallie presses their hands together, palm to palm, skin to skin. Their hands are pressed so tightly together, Ajita imagines that she can feel the ridges of thumbprints. When they finally part, Ajita’s hands smart, as if Yallie’s handprints had been pressed into hers.
She lays down in bed, spreading herself out over the surface, and stares at the ceiling, imagining Rasjaurom beyond the building, beyond the clouds. She can picture the stars in her head, and when she thinks of them, way out there, with Yallie among them…she feels lonely.
She stands in the sand, the wind whispering through her hair. The night sky stretches above her, Rasjaurom bright and clear among the stars. The woman is by her side again, but this time she is alone. The village is quiet, and the huts are dark and empty…it is as if they are the only people on the planet.
“Ajita,” she whispers.
“What is Ajita?” she asks.
The woman raises a hand and points to the sky, at the seven stars of Rasjaurom.
“The stars are like sages. They speak only the truth. They are wisdom from the old world, born again.”
Without even closing her eyes, something flashes in her vision…the village melts away and she stands in a temple. A figure of hardened clay, in a monastery high in the mountains, looks down at her. The wind whistles in the distance as the man of clay surveys his temple with benevolence. The statue has a scarf tied around his waist, and dons a headdress.
She feels, more than hears, an additional person joining her in the room. Turning her head slightly, she stares at the village woman. The village woman nods at the statue.
“Maitreya.”
Their eyes meet and the woman stares at her, unblinking. She brushes a hand across Ajita’s forehead.
“The future,” she says.
The room dims, clay fading away, and a chapel made of intricate detail and color rises around her. Above her, high on the ceiling, two figures brush fingertips, an intimate caress that contains the universe and signifies creation.
“This is Ajita?” she asks.
Voices whisper from the crevices in the walls incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.
“Sapientiae,” says someone behind her.
Ajita turns and finds the village woman staring at her. Gently, with a fingertip, she brushes Ajita’s cheek. The touch is warm. Her fingers flit behind Ajita’s ear.
“Wisdom,” she continues, lips curving.
Ajita gasps at the expression and reaches up, as if to touch the delicate curve, but the woman points at the two male figures on the ceiling.
“Creation,” she says.
Bringing her hand down, she rests it against Ajita’s heart, and she is thrown into darkness. Then something flares and crackles and she feels warmth on the back of her legs, and the walls are illuminated with a crimson glow.
It’s not the chapel, but a dark jagged wall. Hundreds of figures adorn the wall, individuals made of ochre and dirt and paste and lines. She raises her hand, reaching for the eleven stenciled hands on the ceiling and places her hand next to the others. When she lifts her hand away, an outline of her fingers is left behind, joined with the other hands for thousands of years to come.
“History,” the woman says.
Ajita startles, and next to her the woman places her hand on a print, matching it up perfectly.
“Our history. Our identity.”
Again, the woman presses her hand to Ajita’s chest. When she pulls away, a handprint is left behind over Ajita’s heart. When she blinks, she’s suddenly outside.
The night is young and the moon is yellow and bright, and a harmony of insects surrounds her. She runs through the grass and darts around trees, and behind her…three hunters follow.
She runs until she’s caught by a ring of trees. When she turns around, Yallie stands there, frail and tall in her blue uniform, hair and eyes illuminated by the moonlight. Ajita would dare to call her beautiful.
“This is what I have been training for,” Yallie says.
She raises a bow and arrow, gaze steady and determined, eyes bright with the moonlight. She releases the arrow. It flies true, and beside her, the three hunters fall. Their faces are revealed to be the blank faces of Instructors.
She gapes and tears her gaze away from the Instructors, glancing at Yallie for an explanation. But Yallie stands there no longer. Instead, the village woman stands in her place, barefoot in the grass.
“Paradigm shift,” she explains.
She reaches forward, grasps Ajita’s trembling hands, and they’re whisked away from the forest. They stand on a launch pad, bitter wind whipping their legs. Rockets, white and black, shoot off for the distant stars and disappear into the depths of unexplored space. A giant leap for mankind, whispers the static voice. She glances at the village woman, but her face is impassive, almost blank.
“Progress,” she says quietly.
She squeezes her hands and they leave the launch pad behind.
They materialize far above the Earth, standing in a white and sterile environment. They watch out of a window as razor sharp machines with weapons rule the atmosphere, destroying the ground, water and people. Her feet shake as whatever they are standing in moves; she grips the wall, and looks over the village woman questioningly.
“We’re not…we’re not in one of those machines, are we?”
The woman simply nods and Ajita wonders when one step turned into this. With a jolt, their machine loads a projectile…aiming precisely for the planet below. When it strikes the Earth, she feels like Rasjaurom, struck by an arrow, falling and falling and falling.
The world is ashes. The green and brown are gone, replaced by charcoal. The white is gone, replaced by grey smog. The blue is gone, replaced by nothing. She remembers Yallie telling her about why it was so cloudy out, about how it was caused by warfare. Is this what she meant?
“No,” she croaks.
The village woman tilts her head compassionately. Her dark eyes search out her own, and Ajita grips her hand tight.
“What happened to all the people?” she asks desperately.
Suddenly, they’re standing in barren hills made of dark clay. The air is noxious, the very ground is poisoned, and all trace of color has vanished. Most of the creatures and animals have vanished as well, but there a few people…climbing out of the ground, coming out of hiding, evicting themselves from ruined buildings. They growl and snarl at each other and Ajita is sure isn’t supposed to be like this at all.
“Why did we do this?” she asks the woman next to her.
The woman delicately brushes some hair from Ajita’s forehead. The gesture seems out of place in an environment such as this.
“Perhaps it is human nature,” she eventually answers.
“Human…is that what I am?”
“What we are,” the woman corrects patiently.
Ajita feels sick and tries to rip her hands from the woman’s grip.
“How could we be something…that does this?”
Since the woman won’t let her hands go, she nods to the dead planet around them.
“Ajita,” she says gently, “we are so much more than this. You are so much more than this.”
She shakes her head, she just can’t see it.
“Art, humming, names, star bears, kissing…those things are human as well.”
“They are?”
This time the woman’s lips curve wide and bright, “Of course. You are a collection of everything we are. The bad and the good. Our history and identity. Our past and our future. You are Ajita.”
Ajita inhales a deep breath, remembers what Yallie told her: we are starstuff, recycled matter, created from the dust of past stars, worlds and creatures.
“Then what happened? If we are art and humming and kissing, how come I am the only one who knows about it?”
The woman gestures above her.
Blue and silver rockets